Please join us for the Classical Receptions Colloquium featuring a keynote by Laura Jansen, University of Bristol. If you are unable to attend in-person, please join us by Zoom at https://umich.zoom.us/j/99540013792.
SCHEDULE
PANEL 1: 9:30am-10:30AM
Will LaMarra: "The Acts of Andrew’s Reception of the Greek Novelistic Tradition"
Kaitlin Karmen: "László Krasznahorkai's Chasing Homer"
Lena Grimm: "Barbara Köhler’s Elektra. Mirrorings"
BREAK 10:30AM-10:45AM
PANEL 2: 10:45AM-11:45AM
Ciara Barrick: "Eva Palmer-Sikelianos’s Craftwork Economy: Weaving the Queer, the Classical, and Modern Greece"
Ana Santory Rodriguez: "A Cartography of Sorts: Medea on the World’s Stage"
Eleanor Choi: "Classical Receptions in Films, Documentaries, and Online Media"
BREAK 11:45AM-12:00PM
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: 12:00PM-1:00PM
Laura Jansen, Senior Lecturer in Classics and Comparative Literature, University of Bristol: "Classical Reception and Oblique Classicisms" (see below for details)
LUNCH BREAK 1:00PM-2:00PM
PANEL 3: 2:00PM-3:00PM
Allison Grenda: "Truth Before Beauty? The American School's Restoration of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Postwar Athens"
Laura Petersen: "Receiving Egeria’s Itinerarium"
Adam Gustan: "How Can We Practice Classical Reception in Old French Literature?"
ABOUT THE KEYNOTE:
"Classical Reception and Oblique Classicisms"
Laura Jansen (University of Bristol)
More than anything else, Classical Reception has become the study of connectivity. The subfield is predominantly preoccupied with how modernity establishes its dialogical connections with the ancient Mediterranean world, or how this world continues to make a significant impact on our present. Yet certain ideas underpin this practice. For a reception exercise to be worth pursuing (even publishable), the links between antiquity and modernity should be largely frontal and the classical presences explored be demonstrably substantial. Indeed, reception seems to have become a study of relevance, driven by closely plotted links and sizeable returns. But what about the case of modern authors for whom the classical lives alongside but not in their work? What about authors for whom the classical is an alluring yet not necessarily weighty presence, and for whom the connective thread of influence in their work seems to exist at breaking point? Is this something worth pursuing? And, if so, how capacious is the current paradigm to respond to such instances of 'oblique' and/or 'tangent' classicisms? This lecture will consider these questions, drawing attention to new lines of investigation, some of which no longer appear to suit the premises and aims of Reception as we know it.