Seminar Programs in Semester One 2012
Special Seminar at CCANESA - Dr Emmanuela Bakola
You are cordially invited to a special seminar by Ritchie Visiting Fellow, Dr Emmanuela Bakola from UCL :
'The oikos in the Oresteia and the origins of eco-logical discourse'.
Place: CCANESA Seminar Room
Date: Friday June 8th, 11-00 a.m.
Dr Bakola is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College London, and an expert on Old Comedy, the author of Cratinus and the Art of Comedy, Oxford University Press 2010 and co-editor with, L. Prauscello and M. Telò of Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
RESEARCH SEMINARS IN CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY
Welcome to a new semester of the Sydney Classics and Ancient History seminar series, held in the conference room of CCANESA, level 4 of the Madsen Building (on Eastern Ave opposite the Carslaw Blg). CCANESA is at the top of the stairs located directly in front of you when you enter the Madsen Blg (i.e. one floor above the level of the main entrance to the building).
Monday 19th March (12.15pm)
Paul Roche (University of Sydney)
‘Author and authority in the prefaces of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria’
Monday 26th March (12.15pm)
Nicholas Wright (Macquarie University)
‘The Horseman and the Warrior: Paionia and Macedonia in the Fourth Century BC’
Thursday 5th April (4.30pm)
Tristan Taylor (University of New England),
‘Tyrannus or Liberator? Libertas and the Ideology of Usurpation’
Monday 30th April (12.15pm)
Katherine Harper (University of Sydney)
TBA
Monday 7th May (12.15pm)
Hyun Jin Kim (University of Sydney)
‘Greco-Roman Civilization in Eurasia: The Classical legacy from a Eurasian perspective’
Thursday 17th May (4.30pm)
Kit Morrell (University of Sydney)
‘Metus Parthicus, 51-50 BC’
Thurs 24th May (4.30pm)
Caillan Davenport (University of Queensland)
'The end of the militiae equestres’
Monday 28th May (12.15pm)
Samantha Brancatisano (University of Sydney)
TBA
Thursday 7thJune (4.30pm)
Jonathan Wallis (University of Tasmania)
TBA
Enquiries:
Richard Miles
RESEARCH SEMINARS IN CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Seminars will be held on Tuesdays, 3.00-4.30, in the Board Room of the Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies of Australia. It is located on level four of the Madsen Building.
Download the seminar schedule
Enquiries:
Dr Ted Robinson
March 6
Nicola Harrington (University of Oxford)
"Do not say 'I am (too) young to be taken...'" The death and burial of infants in ancient Egypt and the representation of children in mortuary contexts
March 13
Ana Silkatcheva
Exploring mosaic workshops in northern Jordan: part 2
March 20
Hermann Kienast (DAI Athens)
Professorial Fellow of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens
Early Buildings at the Sanctuary of Hera in Samos
March 27
Prof. Herrmann Kienast
The Tower of the Winds at Athens. Architecture and Function
April 24
Beatrice McLoughlin, Andrew Wilson, Steven Hayes
Linking with legacy: Modelling spatio-temporal distribution patterns of 40 year old excavation data from the settlement site of Zagora
May 15
Ted Robinson
Athens, Sicily, South Italy: interactions in comic theatre
June 5
Olivia Kelley
Cultural interaction, ceramic change and individual agency in 3rd century BC southern Italy
Please note: Archaeology Display Case seminars will be held on Friday April 20 and Friday May 11, with topics to be confirmed.
RESEARCH SEMINARS IN NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY
Seminars are held on Mondays at 3.15 pm in the CCANESA Board Room (Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies of Australia), level 4, Madsen Building.
Monday 12th March:
Dr Nicola Harrington (Oxford University)
“As you love life and hate death…’” Attitudes towards death and the dead in Ancient Egyptian society.
Monday 19th March:
Melissa Kennedy (The University of Sydney)
The Development of South/Central Syria in the EB IVB: The Tell Nebi Mend Perspective.
Monday 26th March:
Dr Douglas Baird
A tale of two villages; the spread of farming and the intensification of ritual in Neolithic central Anatolia. Excavations at Pınarbasi and Boncuklu.
Monday 2nd April:
8th ICAANE Seminars
Dr Stephen Bourke (The University of Sydney)
Excavations at Pella in Jordan: The 2011 Field Season.
Dr Bernadette McCall (The University of Sydney)
Historical and Archaeological Approaches to Settlement Data: A Case Study from Iran.
Bernadette Drabsch (The University of Newcastle)
A Procession of Chalcolithic Villagers: Reconsidering Hennessy’s ‘Procession’ Wall Painting from Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan.
Monday 9th April: MID--SEMESTER BREAK
Monday 16th April: No NESS this week-- DISPLAY CASE FRIDAY 20th April
Monday 23rd April:
Dr William Dever (Lycoming College)
Reflections on the Death of ‘Biblical Archaeology.’
Monday 30th April:
Dr Ueli Brunner (University of Zurich)
The Gardens of the Queen of Sheba – Irrigation and Hunt in Ancient Yemen.
Monday 7th May: No NESS this week-- DISPLAY CASE FRIDAY 11th May
Monday 14th May:
Dr Konstantinos Dino Politis (Director of the Hellenic Society for Near Eastern Studies in Greece)
Changing sweetener from honey to sugar: The Origins of the Sugar Industry in Medieval Jordan
Monday 21st May:
Amanda Dusting (The University of Sydney)
The dissemination of Achaemenid architectural style: the divergent cases of Anatolia, Syria and the Caucasus.
Monday 28th May:
Dr Thomas Hikade (University of British Columbia)
Stone tools from the Pyramid Age – a case study from Elephantine Island.
Monday 4th June:
Dr Javier Alvarez--Mon (The University of Sydney)
The Architects of Darius the Great: New Insights into Persian Monumental Architecture and Decorative Practices.
Monday 11th June: STUVAC
Download the seminar schedule
For enquiries and to be placed on the NESS mailing list, email Kat McRae
INSPIRED VOICES RESEARCH CLUSTER RESEARCH SEMINAR AND READING GROUP SCHEDULE 2011
Seminars in the Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies of Australia (CCANESA) 3.30-4.30 pm Wednesdays, unless specified otherwise.
March 14
Julia Kindt
The Inspired Voice: Oracular Communication as Enigmatic Communication
ABSTRACT: My paper takes a broad look at the meaning of the oracular voice imagined as an ambiguous voice. It considers the way in which classical scholars have sought to look behind enigmatic oracles and explains why to attempt to do so is 1) potentially deadly and 2) to misunderstand the nature of the oracular discourse in the ancient Greek world. This traditional way of ‘making sense’ of oracles is compared with a new cultural perspective which embraces the enigmatic oracular voice as meaningful in itself. The main part of my paper illustrates some of the ways in which the enigmatic mode is indeed essential to the kind of knowledge and reflection offered by oracles.
March 21
Kathryn Morgan
Reimagining inspiration in Plato
Kathryn Morgan received her BA degree from Bryn Mawr College and her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at the Ohio State University before joining the Department of Classics at UCLA, where she is currently Professor of Classics. Her interests range broadly over Greek literature of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, although her research focuses on lyric poetry and on the philosopher Plato. These seemingly disparate fields of study are united by her concern in the construction of poetic and philosophical authority. She is the author of Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato (Cambridge, 2000), editor of and contributor to Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and Its Discontents in Classical Athens (Austin, 2003) and numerous articles on Pindar, Archaic lyric and performance, and Plato. Her current book project, Talking to Tyrants: Pindar and the Construction of Sicilian Monarchy, examines Pindar’s victory odes for his Sicilian patrons and the programs of tyrannical self-representation to which they contribute.
“Reimagining Inspiration in Plato”
ABSTRACT: In this paper I will explore the various ways in which Plato critiques and reformulates the notion of inspiration. There does not seem to have been a consistent or systematic theorisation of inspiration prior to Plato, and even within his corpus the vocabulary of inspiration can be used loosely. In some dialogues, however, the notion emerges that the inspired individual is not responsible for mental states of which he is not the origin, a notion central to Plato’s more developed treatments of inspiration. Plato bases his theory of inspiration as ecstatic possession on the dichotomy between divine empowerment and individual skill. The significance of this contrast stretches beyond poetry and has political and philosophical implications, allowing Plato to undermine the achievements of politicians and intellectuals alike. Yet in the Phaedrus Plato summons and subsequently reconfigures the notion of inspiration under the rubric of divine madness. Now the lover, and in particular the philosophical lover, is in the grip of ecstasy and possession, but a possession remade in the image of philosophy. Inspiration is now seen as a psychic reaction to a likeness of a Form that carries one to the divine realm.
March 22
Kathryn Morgan
Shadowlands: Plato and the Frontiers of Mythology
New Law Lecture Theatre 101 6:30-7:30 pm
ABSTRACT: How are we to explain Plato’s deployment of myth in his philosophical dialogues? For many readers this might not seem to pose any problems. The same writer who depreciates the lying and immoral tales of the poets in the Republic formulates his own improving tales of post-mortem punishment and virtuous utopias, a spoonful of sugar to sweeten philosophic medicine. In this lecture I shall try to demonstrate that Plato’s myths are at once more complex and more rewarding than this. I shall explore places in the dialogues where interlocutors squabble over or theorize the permeable border between myth and philosophy in order to understand the very nature of human discourse. Thus in the Gorgias, the Republic, and the Timaeus (among other dialogues) Socrates and his partners in conversation meditate on what makes a narrative a myth, what makes it authoritative and influential. It will emerge that, in a very real sense, myth is the form of narrative most at home in this material world, a narrative that philosophy seeks to transform, to the extent possible for human beings, into an accurate reflection of the truth.
Enquiries: Rick Benitez