Call for Papers: ‘The Unconnected Empire: Distance and Displacement in Roman Literature’
Laurence Seminar, Wednesday 2nd – Friday 4th June 2027
Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge
Organisers: Tom Baarda (thb37@cam.ac.uk); Bill Freeman (wgf23@cam.ac.uk)
Connectivity is the order of the day in studies of the Roman empire (and increasingly its literature) as well as in the wider humanities. This trend continues to unlock valuable insights about the Roman empire’s multiple systems of material and cultural circulation; it also speaks to today’s globalized world, often imagined as a complex mesh of economic and ecological networks. But does this focus on connectivity risk masking some crucial realities of the ancient world, in which the violence of imperial power and the challenges of the environment made travel, transport, and communication far from effortless?
This conference, ‘The Unconnected Empire’, asks how and why Roman literature portrayed the various kinds of distance and displacement that empire entailed. In pursuing this line of investigation, we hope to bring fresh perspectives to the ongoing conversation between postcolonial criticism, the environmental humanities, and the study of Roman literature and culture.
We are seeking proposals for 30-minute papers that focus on texts (written in Latin, Greek, or any other language spoken under Roman rule) from the middle republic until late antiquity. Topics may include (but are not limited to):
- Epistolarity, textual materiality, and the difficulties of written communication across distance;
- Paradoxography and the relationship between distance, foreignness, and fiction;
- Lack of comprehension in contact between cultures, including the ‘creative misunderstandings’ of the imperial ‘Middle Ground’;
- Portrayals of the environment’s agency in allowing or hindering connectivity;
- The representation of colonial ecologies and the unsettling potential of unfamiliar landscapes;
- Connections between imperial resource extraction and cultural transformation;
- The construction of continuities and ruptures between Roman identity in the metropolis and on the margins;
- The impact of imperial displacement on those left behind (e.g. families and dependents), and their role in navigating the fallout.
Confirmed speakers:
- Lauren Curtis (Bard College);
- Catharine Edwards (Birkbeck);
- Olivia Elder (Oxford);
- Michael Hahn (LMU Munich);
- Daniel Hanigan (Cambridge);
- Leah O’Hearn (Maynooth);
- Esther Meijer (St Andrews).
A full brief for the conference, including bibliography, is available here.
To apply to speak at the conference, please send an anonymised abstract of roughly 300 words to laurenceseminar2027@gmail.com by 28th February 2027. We welcome proposals from scholars of all backgrounds and all career stages (including PhD students).
Thanks to funding from the Faculty of Classics, we will be able to offer accommodation for the duration of the Seminar, along with a formal conference dinner and other meals. We hope that many speakers will have their own sources of funding to cover travel expenses, but we may be able to help.
If you have any questions about the conference, please email the organisers: Tom Baarda (thb37@cam.ac.uk) and Bill Freeman (wgf23@cam.ac.uk).
Note: this is not a Classical Association event – please contact the organisers directly with any enquiries.
