Please see below the CfP for the workshop “Bearers of Faith: Local Practice, Communal Ritual, and the expression of Religious Identity in the Ancient and Late-Antique Mediterranean, ca. 200 BC – AD 600″ to be held at the Institute of Classical Studies (11-12 September 2023).
Abstract deadline: 17 March 2023
Religious practices and identities have been key to the human experience throughout history. Religion and faith regularly appear as vindication for the choices, actions, and expressions of groups and individuals. Whether held privately or publicly, chosen or imposed, the significance of religious identity within the social, cultural, and political spheres cannot be overstated. Defining and studying religious identity is however subject to various difficulties, most notably the concept of “identity” itself.
The study of identities has often been constrained by the vague subjectivity of “identity”, both as an epistemological tool and as an object of study (Barth 1969; Gleason 1983; Handler 1994; Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Hekman 2000; Bendle 2002; Gjerde, 2014). In the study of Antiquity and the social and political changes of the Late-Antique Mediterranean, this ambiguity has profoundly affected approaches to historical concepts such as Romanitas, Christianisation, or the transformation of the Roman world, to the point that studies of identity have become contentious (Brown, 1993; Pohl and Reimitz 1998; Gillett, 2002; Halsall, 2007; James 2014; Pohl et al., 2018; Kuuliala & Rantala 2019; Gasparini et al. 2020; Graham 2021). In turn, interdisciplinary study has become more significant in the formation of investigative frameworks of identity, such as Social Identity Approach (e.g., Tucker and Coleman 2014; Hakola 2015; Nikki 2018; Lindstedt 2019) and Scale Theory (Natal and Wood, 2016). But even here there are issues. Despite the advantages of these approaches, namely in their reliance upon scientifically tested propositions about human behaviour (Nikki, Tuori, and Lindstedt 2022), these explanations are still fundamentally reliant upon theoretical systems (Reed and Becker 2003) only subjectively applicable to historical phenomena. The less tangible natures of faith and ritual within religious identity only accentuate this issue.
The aim of this workshop is therefore to move away from broad-stroke theoretical approaches to religious identity in the Mediterranean world. Taking inspiration from Lieu (1994, 108-109), papers will instead focus upon more local or specific case-studies on topics concerning the intersection of religious identity, faith, and ritual in the Mediterranean, ca. 200 BC-AD 800. The juxtaposition of such case studies will allow for comparison and contrast of lived religious experiences from across a wide temporal and geographic spectrum. This in turn shall engender a more reflexively holistic view of how historians have approached the multifarious religious identities and beliefs within the first millennium.
Abstracts from graduate researchers and early career scholars with an interest in interdisciplinary historical study are welcome and encouraged. Topics include, but are not limited to:
– Expression of belief in the divine and/or the supernatural
– Material expressions of religious identity
– Local superstitions and Orthopraxy: subversion or accommodation?
– Burial practices: individual expressions of community
– Beyond borders: Holy places as interregional social arenas
– Local conversions: social constraint or individual consent
Abstracts (max. 300 words) should be sent to newclassicistsconference@gmail.com by 17th March 2023. Selected participants will then be invited to pre-submit a 3000-word version of their paper (July at the latest), which will be circulated among the other participants. Prior to the workshop, a presenter (different from the author) will be assigned to each paper. The task of the presenter is to summarise the paper and provide insightful remarks/questions in order to elicit a discussion. Each paper will be allocated a 30-minute slot (10 minutes max for the presentation and 20 minutes for the discussion). Following the workshop, the organisers would be interested to publish the proceedings of the workshop.