Call for Papers: ‘Binning the Classics? Discard Studies and Classical Antiquity’ (Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome)
Conference date: 23rd June 2027, Stewart House, London
Organisers: Rhiannon Easterbrook and Liz Gloyn
Peña has observed that, since ‘our planet is choking on refuse’, the problem of rubbish has never been more pressing.[1] Furthermore, we are currently witnessing the wasting of the Humanities – including classics — in higher education. The convergence of disposability in consumer items and in academia makes it timely to investigate how our understanding of throwing away and recycling might inform our understanding of classical cultures and traditions.
Exploring waste and refuse from a cultural and theoretical perspective offers a complementary line of thought both to work in the discipline that uses ecocritical perspectives and archaeological studies of ancient waste management.[2] The work of Ann Laura Stoler and others on ‘imperial debris’ is already making an appearance in classical reception studies.[3] Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky state that ‘discard studies approaches waste as a wider set of social, political, and material systems,’[4] and as such they have the potential to support the study of ancient empires and their legacies, along with reception in modern colonial and postcolonial societies.
As far as junk objects of research are concerned, classical reception studies has continued to expand its archive of possible sources to include everyday ephemera such as advertisements and unstable digital documentation, including user-generated content.[5] Discard studies may provide a useful framework for tackling methodological issues related to the study of ephemeral sources, both material and digital.
The organisers invite abstracts of c. 250 words for theoretically and methodologically inclined, 20-minute papers exploring the possibilities opened up through Discard Studies and related frameworks, such as Critical Waste Studies, for the study of classical cultures and traditions. Areas for investigation might include:
- Approaches to material and digital ephemera in classical reception studies; ecomedia
- Material ecologies of ancient texts and artworks, including their transmission
- Wasting and recycling in ancient art, literature, and performance
- Rubbish, the more-than-human, and humanistic studies
- The lifecycle of ideas and/or objects in classical traditions: their production, consumption, and discarding
- Valuing and devaluing the classical
- Concepts of purity and pollution in the history of classical scholarship
- Processes of wasting in the modern humanities department and the wider classics ecosystem
We welcome contributions from scholars at all career stages working across ancient Mediterranean literature, art, philosophy, and classical reception.
Deadline: 16th January 2027
We aim to notify those who submit abstracts about whether they have been accepted by 10th February.
Useful links:
Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky (2022), Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power, MIT Press doi [dot] org/10.7551/mitpress/12442.001.0001 [Open Access]
Discard Studies | Social studies of waste, pollution & externalities : discardstudies [dot] com
[1] J. Theodore Peña, ‘Recycling in the Roman World Concepts, Questions, Materials, and Organization’ in Duckworth, Chloë N., and Andrew Wilson eds., Recycling and Reuse in the Roman Economy, Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 9-58, p. 9.
[2] Christopher Schliephake, ‘Profile Ecocriticism and Ancient Environments’. The Classical Review 72.1 (2022): 393-396.
[3] Ann Laura Stoler ed., Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Giacomo Loi, ‘From Enemy to Ruins: Roman Empire and Decadence in the Poetry of Dan Pagis and Haim Gouri’ in Vered Lev Kenaan and Patricia A. Rosenmeyer (eds) Classics Transformed in Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian Receptions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), 323-48
[4] Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky, Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022) p. 4, fig. 1.1.
[5] Comparing the fragile nature of internet-based data to the destruction of the Library at Alexandria has become a common trope. See, for example, Parker Bach, Harry Hudome, and Alexander Rudenshiold, ‘‘Like the Burning of the Library of Alexandria’: The Death and Deletion of Yahoo! Answers’, Spectator 43.1 (2023): 9-18
Note: this is not a Classical Association event – please contact the organisers directly with any enquiries.
