New Antiquities:

Aesthetics, Taste, and Scholarship in the Eighteenth Century

 

The University of Chicago

April 29-30, 2005

 

This two-day interdisciplinary conference will examine the interpretation of antiquity in Europe from the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns to the emergence of Romanticism. This was the period in which specific texts, historical sites, and architectural ruins served as catalysts for the formation of new aesthetic values, new ways of conceiving travel (on and off the Grand Tour), and new ways of thinking about history itself.  Our aim is to examine Antiquity not as a stable “tradition,” but instead as a dynamic force in the reshaping of Enlightenment aesthetics, taste, and scholarship.  Likewise, we will discuss how the Enlightenment in turn reshaped Antiquity. Of central concern will be the ways in which scholars, artists, travelers, and Enlightenment thinkers pushed the understanding of Antiquity beyond the geographic, political, and cultural borders established during the Renaissance.

 

The keynote lecture will be given by Anthony Grafton (Princeton), and speakers include Pierre Force (Columbia), Tamara Griggs (Chicago), Constanza Güthenke (Princeton), John Hamilton (Harvard), Sarah Marquardt (Chicago), Glenn Most (Chicago), Larry Norman (Chicago), Sophie Rabau (Paris III), Bruce Redford (Boston), Jonathan Sachs (Concordia-Montreal), Levent Yilmaz (EHESS, Paris).The conference schedule is included below.

 

“New Antiquities” has been made possible by generous support from the Franke Institute for the Humanities, The Division of the Humanities, France Chicago Center, The Center for Interdisciplinary Research in German Literature and Culture, Humanities Collegiate Division, Nicholson Center for British Studies, and the Departments of Romance Languages, Classics, English, and History.

 

 

The conference sessions (except for the keynote address) will be held at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, located in the lobby level of Regenstein Library, 1100 East 57th Street

 

PERSONS WITH A DISABILITY WHO BELIEVE THEY NEED ASSISTANCE

ARE REQUESTED TO CALL 773-702-8274 IN ADVANCE.

 

 

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

 

Friday, April 29, 1:30 p.m.

Franke Institute for the Humanities

Session I:  The Problem of Homer

 

Glenn Most, University of Chicago

“How Many Homers?”

 

Larry Norman, University of Chicago

“Gardening Homer”

 

Sophie Rabau, Université de Paris III

“Fictions of Homer”

 

(Richard Strier, University of Chicago, Session I Moderator)

 

 

4:30 p.m.

Conference Opening Remarks by Danielle Allen, University of Chicago

 

Keynote Address

Social Sciences Research Building, Room 122

 

Anthony Grafton, Princeton University

“The Art of History in Early Modern Europe”

 

(Introduction by Tamara Griggs, University of Chicago)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, April 30, 9:30 a.m.

Franke Institute for the Humanities

Session II: Between Rome and Greece

 

Tamara Griggs, University of Chicago

“Taste and Scholarship in Rome”

 

Jonathan Sachs, Concordia University-Montreal

“Roman Palmyra and Robert Wood”

 

John Hamilton, Harvard University

“German Philhellenism”

 

Bruce Redford, Boston University

“The Measure of Ruins”

 

(Chenxi Tang, University of Chicago, Session II Moderator)

 

 

 

Lunch break

 

 

 

Saturday, April 30, 2:30 p.m.

Franke Institute for the Humanities

Session III: Classicism and Romanticism

 

Levent Yilmaz, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

“Time and the Querelle”

 

Pierre Force, Columbia University

“Antiquity and Voltaire’s Le Siecle de Louis XIV”

 

Sarah Marquardt, University of Chicago

“Dacier and Women Writers in France”

 

Constanza Güthenke, Princeton University

“Classical Scholarship, Intimacy, and the Early Romantics”

 

 (Robert Morrissey, University of Chicago, Session III Moderator)