Call for Papers: Re-Imagining the Ancient World in 19th-Century Britain

Deadline for Abstracts: 15 October 2003

In the past twenty years, several scholars have focused broadly on the ways in which "the Classical tradition" informed the cultural milieu of 19th-century Britain. These studies explore why and how Classical studies contributed to the shaping and validating of English political ideologies, social hierarchies,
academic institutions, and aesthetic values. However, this current work also seems to suggest that the 19th-century Britons' relationship with
antiquity derived from an unexamined sense of cultural heritage, a common ancestry located in ancient Rome and Greece. This conference seeks to interrogate this relationship between antiquity and the 19th century: is it still useful to rationalize 19th-century Classicism as an effect of mythologized national genealogies? How else might we account for the reception and transmission of Classics in this period? In what ways did educators, writers, artists, and musicians engage with the ancient past? Are there manifestations of this engagement that intimate a greater heterogeneity of response to antiquity than the term "Classical tradition" implies?

This international, interdisciplinary conference brings together faculty and graduate students from various fields within the humanities (e.g., literature, Classics, history, art history, anthropology, music, drama) to explore collectively representations of antiquity from the beginnings of British Romanticism to the early 20th century. Primary in focus are the ways in which British artists re-imagined the ancient world in the fine arts: literature (drama, fiction, poetry, or nonfiction); art (painting, sculpture); architecture; and music. However, the conference will also encourage dialogue about the ways in which the period re-considered knowledge of the ancient past through advances in the professional fields of archaeology, history, philology, anthropology, ethnology, paleontology, and mythography. Papers may be about the use of Classical themes or subject matter, translations of ancient texts, Classical education, and other creative or scholarly representations of ancient civilizations (including Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Assyrian cultures). Papers should be 15-20 minutes in length. Please send paper proposals (maximum: two double-spaced pages) by October 15, 2003 to:

Meilee D. Bridges
Department of English Language & Literature
University of Michigan
3187 Angell Hall
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1003
By email: bridgesm@umich.edu (attachments welcome)

NB: As abstracts will be reviewed anonymously, please include your title but no other identifying information on your proposal. Please do include your name, institutional and email addresses, phone number, proposal title, and potential audio-visual needs in a cover letter that accompanies the abstract.

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