APA Annual Meeting 2007
American Philological Association Annual Meeting, San Diego 4-7 January, 2007
(Note: links to abstracts on the APA website are in PDF form and will open in a new window)
There are a number of panels on classical reception topics. Panels addressing the issues of the interaction between antiquity and modernity include:
Rome in Prime Time
Friday, January 5. 8:30 – 11:00
Sponsored by the APA Committee on Outreach
Mary-Kay Gamel, Organizer
In fall 2005 the television cable network HBO broadcast a lavishly produced series called Rome. The twelve episodes, which focused on events from 52 to 44 BCE, featured both historical figures and invented characters. After Gladiator (2000) and Troy (2004), Rome is the latest in a surge of popular representations of the ancient Mediterranean world. This panel aims to help classicists familiarize ourselves with appropriations of "our" field and the ideological purposes to which they are being put, as well as to think about how participation in our own culture affects our understanding of the ancient world.
1. Kristina Milnor, Barnard College
“Do You Have an Ubuan Dictionary?” or What I Learned as a Consultant for HBO’s Rome
2. Holly Haynes, The College of New Jersey
Rome’s Opening Titles and the Triumphal Tituli of the Late Republic
3. Robert Gurval, University of California, Los Angeles
Cast(igat)ing Cleopatra: HBO’s Rome and an Egyptian Queen for the 21st Century
4. Gregory Daugherty, Randolph-Macon College
Titus Pullo of the Thirteenth
5. Alison Futrell, University of Arizona
“Not Some Cheap Murder”: Caesar’s Assassination
Respondent: Sandra Joshel, University of Washington.
Classica Africana V: Classicism and Anti-Classicism among Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century African American Intellectuals
Friday, January 5, 11:15-1:15
Patrice D. Rankine, Organizer
During the late nineteenth century, a black classicist was not entirely a rarity. The one-time slave William Sanders Scarborough wrote a Greek textbook (First Lessons); Anna Julia Cooper advocated for ancient Greek women’s education; and W.E.B. Du Bois taught Latin and saw the Classics as essential to citizenship. As late as 1911, writers like Du Bois were using classical mythology as the basis for creative writing, but the tides were certainly turning. Classicism among a large contingent of American authors was diminishing. This panel looks at the early twentieth century as a critical moment in black American intellectual life.
1. John Quinn, Hope College
Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pursuing the Ignis Fatuus of Classicism
2. Michele Valerie Ronnick, Wayne State University
“Give ’em Your Greek, but Study Cotton”: The Quest for the Silver Fleece by W.E.B. Du Bois
3. Kenneth Goings, Ohio State University and Eugene O’Connor, Ohio State University
They “Dare[d] to Call Their Souls their Own”: African American Resistance to the Suppression of the Classics at Historically Black Colleges
4. Patrice D. Rankine, Purdue University
The Classics and the New Negro: Anti-Classicism in Black Esthetics of the Early Twentieth Century.
Respondent: T. Davina McClain, Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern State University
Latinity and the Classical Tradition
Friday, January 5, 1:30-4:00
Ralph Hexter, Presider
1. Brad L. Cook, San Diego State University
Cicero’s Biography in the Renaissance and the Rebirth of the Scholar-Citizen
2. Nancy E. Llewellyn, University of Virginia
Finishing an Unfinished Epic. The Case of Columbeis
3. David Wray, University of Chicago
A Philosophical Point of Latinity: What’s in It for Spinoza?
4. Peter O’Brien, Dalhousie University
Borrowing Ammianus’ Pencil: The Res Gestae in English Translation
Alexander Hamilton and the Classics
Saturday, January 5, 8:30-11:00
Sponsored by the APA Committee on the Classical Tradition
Carl A. Rubino, Organizer
Carl A. Rubino and Caroline Winterer, Presiders
Alexander Hamilton, who was born out of wedlock (and probably of “mixed race”) on the island of Nevis, has been the most neglected of the founders of the United States, even though he was arguably the most influential of them. Hamilton came late to the study of the classics; but once he began that study, he embraced it with a vengeance. We will examine the role the classics played in the intellectual life of the man who wrote most of the Federalist essays and who, as the first Secretary of the Treasury, brought the US economic system into being.
1. Frank Anechiarico, Hamilton College
“If Men Were Angels”: Constitution-Making and Ambition in the Careers of Hamilton and Cicero
2. Carl J. Richard, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Alexander Hamilton, the Classics as a Means of Social Mobility, and the Importance of Translations
3. Carl A. Rubino, Hamilton College
The Sound of the Trumpet: Alexander Hamilton and the Challenge of the Classics
Respondent: Caroline Winterer, Stanford University (10 mins.)
Queer Icons from Greece and Rome
Saturday, January 6, 11:15-1:15.
Sponsored by the Lambda Classical Caucus
Ruby Blondell, Organizer
This panel focuses on the appropriation of ancient historical figures to construct, celebrate and/or deny contemporary queer identities. The papers explore the uses and abuses of a number of such figures, ranging from Sappho to the colorful third-century Roman emperor Elagabalus. They are arranged in approximate chronological order of the modern appropriations under discussion, which include biography (Magnificent Hadrian), a mid-20th-century lesbian magazine (The Ladder), several items of gay fiction from the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary film (Alexander), a rock musical (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), and a specimen of Neo-Conservative political discourse.
1. Bryan Burns, University of Southern California
Sculpting Antinous
2. Jody Valentine, University of Southern California
Lesbians Are from Lesbos: Sappho and Identity Construction in The Ladder
3. Mark Nugent, University of Washington
Amor malus and “Male Armor”: Elagabalus and the Politics of Sexuality
4. H. Christian Blood, University of California, Santa Cruz
Plato and his Symposium in Athens, Hollywood, and Washington D.C.
5. Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos, Florida Atlantic University
Oliver Stone’s Alexander and the Liminality of Same-Sex Desire
Alan of Lille
Saturday, January 6, 11:15-1:15.
Sponsored by the Medieval Latin Studies Group
Bridget Balint, Organizer
The twelfth-century magister Alan of Lille left a remarkably diverse body of work, ranging from instructions for preachers to philosophical allegory. Across a variety of genres, Alan paid close attention to the relationship between the complexities of language and the complexities of the created world of Nature and its supposed pinnacle, humanity. The papers in this session examine the ways in which Alan marshaled the arts of language to illuminate human intellectual and moral potential in terms of humanity’s place in the universal scheme of creation.
1. Leigh Harrison, Cornell University
The Ascent of Phronesis and the Philosophy of Rhetoric in the Anticlaudianus
2. Cynthia White, University of Arizona
Omnis mundi creatura quasi liber: Alan of Lille on the Art of Preaching
3. Stephen D’Evelyn, University of Notre Dame
Nature and Grace in the Poetry and Prose of Alan of Lille’s De Planctu Naturae
4. Milena Minkova, University of Kentucky
A Double Metaphor in De Planctu Naturae by Alan of Lille as a Key to its Interpretation?
Respondent: Jan Ziolkowski, Harvard University (20 mins.)
Classical Tradition
Saturday, January 6, 1:30-4:00.
Andrew Szedegy-Maszak, Presider
1. Michael Lynn-George, University of Alberta
“And a Sky like Lead”: Weil, Auerbach, and Homer in the Twentieth Century
2. C. W. Marshall, University of British Columbia
J. T. Sheppard and the Cambridge Birds
3. John Carlevale, Berea College
Time in The Bassarids and The Bassarids in Its Time
4. Ingrid E. Holmberg, University of Victoria
“We Had No Voice”: Penelope’s Maids in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad
5. Lillian Doherty, University of Maryland
World Atlas: Jeanette Winterson’s Account of the Atlas Myth in Weight
Classics and Civility in the 21st Century
Sunday, January 7, 8:15-10:45
Victoria E. Pagán and Susanna Braund, Organizers
In The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (Waco 2005), Lee T. Pearcy boldly critiques American classical education as the perpetuation of an outmoded Altertumswissenschaft, and he offers an equally bold solution: classical studies at the core of liberal arts education. Four papers respond to this provocative book from a range of perspectives, including ancient history, material culture, and post-colonialism. The role of classics in American education—indeed, the definition of what “Classics” is—remains hotly contested. This panel offers the opportunity for debate to the audience most vested in the outcome.
1. Andrew Wolpert, University of Florida
The Use and Abuse of Classics
2. Judith M. Barringer, University of Edinburgh
Altertumswissenschaft v. Liberal Arts: A Continuing Debate in “Material Culture”
3. W. R. Johnson, University of Chicago
Re-Representing the Gallic Wars
4. Page duBois, University of California at San Diego
Other Civilities, Other Civilizations
Respondent: Lee T. Pearcy, The Episcopal Academy
KINHMA: Classical Antiquity and Cinema
Sunday, January 7, 8:15-10:45
Sponsored by the Three-Year Colloquium on KINHMA: Classical Antiquity and Cinema
Hanna M. Roisman, Organizer
This panel addresses some of the ways in which film re-imagines the ancient concept of the hero that has been fundamental to classical literature since Homer’s Iliad. Individual papers deal with various evocations or representations of Greek models in historical and mythical contexts, partly in films set in antiquity, partly in films that tell modern stories. All illustrate the wide range that the reception of ancient literary archetypes can find in a visual medium.
1. Hanna M. Roisman, Colby College, and Martin M. Winkler, George Mason University
Introduction
2. James J. Clauss, University of Washington
God Made Man: The Classical Hero in Film
3. Charles C. Chiasson, University of Texas at Arlington
Homeric Heroism and Love in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy
4. Maria Cecília de Miranda Nogueira Coelho, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo
Paris Does Strange Things: Jean Renoir’s Representation of Men in Combat for Helen
5. Ward Briggs, University of South Carolina
Codes of Manliness in Walter Hill’s The Warriors
6. Anastasia Bakogianni, Institute of Classical Studies, U.K.
A Heroic Vision: The Character of Orestes in Michael Cacoyannis’ Electra (1961–62)
7. Arthur J. Pomeroy, Victoria University of Wellington
Alexander as Hero
Ancient Theater and Sexuality in Modern Performance
Sunday, January 7, 11:45-1:45
Sponsored by the Three-Year Colloquium on Performing Ideology: Classicism, Modernity, and Social Context
Eva Stehle, Organizer
The four papers discuss the way in which various modern productions (1931 to present), American and British, foreground issues of sexuality as they recreate Greek plays. These modern adaptations and productions stage an implicit comparison with modern conflicts over what constitutes transgressive behavior and what constitutes tragedy. Two papers investigate homosexual subtexts in modern versions of particular Greek plays, whether in the language or in men playing female roles in a modern setting of gay politics and drag. Two present several radical playwrights’ provocative reimaginings of male characters’ situations, changing their relationships with—and our view of—the female characters. The papers set up stimulating cross-currents and illustrate the tremendous modern interest in reworking Greek tragedy.
1. Mark Masterson, Victoria University of Wellington
“It’s Queer, It’s Like Fate”: Imaging Queer in O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra
2. Nancy Rabinowitz, Hamilton College
Male Medea
3. Hallie Marshall, University of British Columbia
Saxon Violence and Social Decay in Kane’s Phaedra’s Love and Harrison’s Prometheus
4. Thomas Jenkins, Trinity University
X-Rated Sophocles: Sex and Text in Alice Tuan’s Ajax (Por Nobody)
Respondent: Kirk Ormand, Oberlin Collegee
Other papers of interest include:
David Baum, Union College
Plutarch’s Caesar in Fifteenth-Century Italy: Poggio and Guarino’s Readings of the Vita Caesaris (Panel: Roma Chaeroneana: Plutarch’s Reception of Rome. Friday, January 5, 8:30-11:00)
Silke-Maria Weineck, University of Michigan
Reversing Plato: On Philosophy, Madness, and the Divine in Hölderlin’s Poetics (Panel: Plato and Hellenistic Poetry, Friday January 5, 1:30-4:00)
Akihiko Watanabe, Western Washington University
Clips, Cartoons, and Texts: Pop-Culture Meets the Ancient World (Panel: Literate to Visual and Back Again. Saturday, January 6, 8:30-11:00)
Michael Johnson, Rutgers University
Mommsen Lecture Notes at Rutgers University (Panel: Late Roman History. Saturday, January 6, 11:15-1:15)
Randolph H. Lytton, George Mason University
The Classical Tradition in Washington, D.C.: An Introduction to the Greco-Roman World (Panel: Pedagogy. Sunday, January 7, :8:15-10:45)
The conference will also feature a performance of Aristophanes, Birds on Friday, January 5 at 6:30 pm.
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