Annual Classics Graduate Colloquium

A Crucible of Cultures: Cultural Exchange in the Ancient Mediterranean

February 22nd, 2019

Human | Nature: Environmental Humanities in Historical Perspective

March 24th, 2018

What Does Evil Look Like? Horror, Macabre, and Ideological Control throughout the Ancient Mediterranean World

March 25th, 2017

Greeks Among Romans, Romans Among Greeks: Ancient Traditions of Cultural Reception

November 14th, 2015

Walking the Line: Limits and Boundaries in the Ancient World

March 29th, 2014

Keynote Speaker: Charles Platter, University of Georgia  
Opening Address: Fritz Graf, The Ohio State University
University Hall Museum, Room 143 - 230 North Oval Mall

"Apollo and Daphne" by Lorenzo Bernini

Schedule of Events

Hospitality and ? ? ?

March 30th 2013

Mershon Center
1501 Neil Avenue
Columbus, Ohio

Keynote Speaker: Daniel Caner, University of Connecticut
Opening Address: Tom Hawkins, The Ohio State University
Location: Mershon Center at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

Jupiter and Mercurius in the House of Philemon and Baucisby Rubens

From Odysseus’ famous encounter with Polyphemos to Martial’s Xenia (book XIII), guests and hosts appear frequently in the ancient world. More recently, scholars have explored the role hospitality may play in less obvious ways, such as the potential for hospitality presented by itinerant sophists (Tell, 2011). The concept of hospitality deserves serious attention, in part because it offers an entry point—an invitation—to exploring other concepts such as reading practices, monastic orders, gift-giving, and citizenship. We invite you to add to the scholarly discussion of hospitality in the ancient world by relating it to other times, concepts, texts, and contexts.

Schedule of Events

Chosen Chains: Creating Loyalty in the Ancient World

April 21st, 2012

The Mershon Center

Keynote Speaker: David Konstan, Brown University

Loyalty, like love, can be driven by a range of motivations: an emotional experience, the desire to maintain tradition, or practical self-interest. In the ancient world, loyalty to family and state are presupposed as static and near-universal values of which famous instances are employed as models for other loyalty-relationships. Yet even the claims that family and the state could make upon their members are not self-evident. How did these institutions maintain their claim and react to changing circumstances? How, more generally, did individuals and institutions establish and maintain their roles as objects of loyalty? Did they look to traditional models, or did they frame their claims in opposition to them? Can we see repeated patterns or common strategies either in the historical record or in literary accounts?

The aim of this colloquium is to investigate the creation of loyalty in the ancient world by examining the recurring patterns of action and language that surround the establishment of these bonds. It will pursue this theme through two distinct avenues: lived loyalties as we can access them through the historical record and literary representations which pose questions about the nature and creation of loyalty. Historically, how did the development of loyalty work within and between societal groups, for example in the foundation documents that established relationships between colonies and mother cities?  How did Roman military leaders encourage loyalty from their troops? How did ancient imperial powers like Rome and Athens attempt to create loyalty in the people they governed? Did cults like those of Isis or Cybele develop a following among the Roman population by working themselves into the traditional language of loyalty or by emphasizing their supposed foreignness?

Likewise, we are interested in exploring how ancient authors conceptualized, portrayed, and made use of the creation of loyalty. How did authors use moments when bonds of loyalty are created – or fail to materialize –to characterize figures in their works or to comment upon broader themes? How do Livy’s Sabine women model the character he imagines for his Rome? Can the elegists be said to undertake a claim of loyalty upon their puellae and, if so, how do these claims, regardless of their validity, help to construct the poet's elegaic persona? Did early Christian communities frame their rejection of pagan culture in terms of loyalty and, if so, how and to whom?

Please address any questions to Hanne Eisenfeld or Marion Kruse

Writing the Past

Fact and Fiction in Ancient Historiography
 

Keynote Speaker: John Marincola, Florida State University

“Indeed, history, so it has been contended, needs to be as convincing as fiction”
    - Ronald Syme, “Fictional History Old and New: Hadrian”

Schedule of Events

Please direct any questions to Mark Wright or Corey Hackworth

Post Scriptum?

Questioning the Status of Greek and Latin Literature in Late Antiquity

Keynote Speaker: Gavin Kelly, University of Edinburgh

Saturday, April 17, 2010
George Wells Knight House
104 E. 15th Avenue

Schedule of Events

The Future of the Ancient: Making Classics Relevant

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Keynote Speaker: Mary Beard

Location: George Wells Knight House
Contact: teitel-paule.1@osu.edu or danielewicz.1@osu.edu

Schedule of Events

Imitation and Innovation:

Mimesis in the Ancient World

April 5, 2008

Coordinators

Steve Maiullo
Katarzyna Jazdzewska

Opening Speaker

Richard Fletcher (The Ohio State University)

Keynote Speaker

Tim Whitmarsh (Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford)

Graduate Student Participants

James Brusuelas (University of California Irvine)
Edward Dandrow (University of Chicago)
John Oksanish (Yale University)
Anna Peterson (The Ohio State University)
Seth Phipps (Magdalen College, University of Oxford)
Emily Pillinger (Princeton University)

Schedule of Events

The Many Faces of the Gods

Examining Conceptions of Divinity in Antiquity

Keynote Speaker: Jan Bremmer, University of Groningen

April 7th, 2007

George Wells Knight House
104 East 15th Avenue

Schedule of Events

Identity and Identifications

Cultural Politics in the Ancient World

Keynote Speaker: Thomas Habinek, University of Southern California

Saturday, April 15, 2006
George Wells Knight House
104 East 15th Avenue

Schedule of Events