Epigraphy Conference on Social History and Epigraphic Evidence

Fri, September 11 - Sat, September 12, 2026
8:15 am - 5:30 pm
Ohio Union, Barbie Tootle Room - 3rd Floor Room 3156 - 1739 N. High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43210

Please join us for Social History and Epigraphic Evidence, a conference hosted by The Ohio State University Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies.

This event is open to the public. 
Please click the link to join the webinar. Password: 808179

General Information

All events, otherwise indicated in the schedule below, will take place at the Ohio Union (1739 N High St), in the Barbie Tootle Room (room 3156), which is located on the 3rd Floor. 

On the day of the conference, our graduate student Sydney Urbaniak (urbaniak.17@osu.edu) will provide tech support. Please email her a copy of your PowerPoint presentation, if you have one, so that she has easy access to all of them. If you prefer to save your PowerPoint on a flash-drive, we can also accommodate that. 

Please contact Wendy Watkins (watkins.72@osu.edu) for all your travel related questions, and Gaia Gianni (gianni.8@osu.edu) for all other questions.

Friday, September 11th

 

8.15-9.00 Breakfast 

9.00-9.15 Opening remarks: Gaia Gianni (The Ohio State University)

9.15-10.45 Session 1: Family Matters (Presider: Ruth Li)

  • Mills McArthur (Southern Adventist University) “Attic Manumissions: Family Relationships and Social Control.”
  • Damian Day (University of Virginia) “Brothers-in-Blood or Brothers-in-Arms: New Methods for Interpreting Frater in Solders’ Funerary Inscriptions.”
  • Sheena Finnigan (University of Chicago) “Nunc quis alet natum? An Analysis of an Enslaved Mother’s Funerary Monument.”

10.45-11.15 Coffee Break

11.15-12.45 Session 2: Epigraphy in the Near East (Presider: Matthew Herzog)

  • Anna Accettola (Independent Scholar) “Comparative Identities: What does it mean to be ‘Nabataean’ in the Mediterranean World?”
  • Kate Farrow (University of Melbourne) “Epigraphy at the Margins: Scythians and the Limits of the Written Record.”
  • James Moore (The Ohio State University) “The Corpus of Imperial Aramaic Inscriptions and Epigraphs from Asia Minor in the DEAPS Database.”

12.45-2.00 Lunch 

2-3.30 Session 3: Labor and identity (Presider: Ashley Jordan)

  • Marianna Esposito (The Ohio State University) “Being a Faber in the Classis Praetoria Misenensis. The extraordinary case of Marcus Plotius Firmus.”
  • Jinyu Liu (Emory University) “The Dual Role of Roman Collegium in Relation to Family.”
  • Hallie G. Meredith (Washington State University) “Handheld Words: Finding late Roman Professional Women Glass Producers.”

3.30-4.00: Coffee Break

4.00-5.30: Keynote Speaker: John Bodel (Brown University) “Out of the Shadows: Forty Years of Epigraphy and Social History". 

5.30-9.00: Reception and Dinner at the Faculty Club

 

Saturday, September 12th

 

8.15-9.00 Breakfast 

9.00-10.30 Session 4: Living religion (Presider: Charlotte McDonald)

  • Stella Skaltsa (Queen’s University) “Reviving the cult of Poseidon in Late Hellenistic Thasos: the role of associations.”
  • Yesenia Brambila (University of California Berkeley) “Taskscapes of the Attic Sacrificial Calendars.”
  • Grace Funsten (University of Pittsburg) “Sensory Approaches to Latin Verse Epitaphs: CIL 6.5302 as Case Study.”

10.30-11.00 Coffee Break

11.00-12.30 Session 5: Greco-Roman Slavery (Presider: Lucy Parr)

  • Marios Anastasiadis (New York University) “An ‘Epigraphy of Slavery’? The Attic Curse Tablets as a Case Study.”
  • Jan-Mathieu Carbon (Queen’s University) “Enslaved and Prisoners: Comparing Rules about ‘Release’ or Temporary Freedom in Greek Festivals.”
  • Morgan Palmer (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) “Slaves and Freed Persons of the Vestal Virgins: Evidence from Roman Inscriptions.”

12.30-2.00 Lunch 

2.00-3.30 Session 6: Pompeii and Herculaneum (Presider: Marianna Esposito)

  • Holly Sypniewski and Jacqueline DiBiasie-Sammons (Clarkson University and University of Mississippi) “New Figural Graffiti in the Casa dei Cervi, Herculaneum (IV.21).”
  • Ashley Jordan and Charlotte McDonald (The Ohio State University) “The Faces of Pompeii.”
  • Steven Tuck (Miami University) “Variances in the Identities Among Survivors of Vesuvius from Herculaneum and Pompeii.”

3.30-4.00 Coffee Break

4.00-5.30 Keynote Speaker: Sara Forsdyke (University of Michigan) “Beyond Textiles and Sex Work: Epigraphical Evidence for Women’s Income-Generating Labor Outside the Household in Ancient Greece”

5.30-9.00 Reception and Dinner 

 


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