Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values VIII

 2^nd CALL FOR PAPERS

(Please note the change of venue)

 The Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values were established as a biennial venue in which scholars could investigate the diverse aspects of Greek and Roman values. Each colloquium focuses on a single theme, which participants explore from a diversity of perspectives and disciplines. A collection of papers from the first colloquium, held at Leiden in 2000, was published in 2003 under the title ‘Andreia’— Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, edd. Ralph M. Rosen and Ineke Sluiter. This was followed by Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, (2005), City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity (2006), KAKOS: Badness and Anti-Values in Classical Antiquity (2008), Valuing Others in Classical Antiquity (2010), Aesthetic Value in Classical Antiquity (2012) and Valuing Antiquity in Antiquity, edd. James Ker and Christoph Pieper,  (in preparation).
The topic of the eighth colloquium, to be held at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, June 19-21, 2014, will be:

Landscapes of Value

Modern concerns with the environment and the place humans occupy in the natural world have led to better understanding of the complex ways in which humans interact with and construct space. How do we map the landscape and give it meaning? What is the relationship between the world of mountains, rivers, plains and rocks, and the human presence in these landscapes? How we occupy or use the natural world around us is influenced by, and in turn shapes, epistemologies of time and every other aspect of culture. The landscape is an integral component in human perceptions of the differences between wild and civilized, and nomadic and agricultural, just as these in turn give shape to ideas of identity, belonging, foreignness and gender. Undoubtedly for the Greeks and Romans the landscape was the primary location for articulating the subtle and fluid relationship between the human and the divine.
This conference is designed to investigate these questions in relation to the rich tradition of imbuing the landscape of the Greek and Roman worlds with meaning. From the location of Minoan peak sanctuaries  to the significance attached to battlefields, to the elusive place of landscape in pastoral poetry, every aspect of ancient Mediterranean culture interacted in powerful and significant ways with the landscape.
For the eighth Penn-Leiden colloquium, we invite abstracts for papers (30 minutes) that address ‘landscapes of value’ along these lines. We hope to bring together researchers in all areas of classical studies, including literature, philosophy, linguistics, history, and visual and material culture, and hope to discover the significant points of intersection and difference between these areas of focus. Abstracts should address explicitly the notion of landscapes of value.
Selected papers will be considered for publication by Brill Publishers. Those interested in presenting a paper are requested to submit a 1-page abstract, by email no later than Friday December 20^th, 2013. Contact (please copy both with email correspondence):
Prof.  Ineke Sluiter

Email: i.sluiter@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Prof. Jeremy McInerney
American School of Classical Studies
54 Odos Souidias
Athens, GR 106-76
Greece
Email: jmcinern@sas.upenn.edu