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​We are pleased to announce that the 38th Annual Meeting and Conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies will be hosted by Victoria University of Wellington from January 31 to February 3 2017.

 

The Australasian Society for Classical Studies (ASCS) aims at the advancement of the study of ancient Greece and Rome and related fields. Membership is open to all present and past researchers, teachers and students of the languages, literature, history, thought and archaeology of the ancient world, and other interested persons.

 

The conference convener is Dr Diana Burton.  Please direct enquires to her at ascs2017@vuw.ac.nz, or use the 'Contact us' form here.

The conference dinner will be held at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand; details are on the registration page.

The final version of the conference programme spreadsheet is available for download here

The abstracts are available for download here.  Please note that a printed version of these will be included in the conference pack.

The venue

The conference will be held at Rydges Hotel.  (For those of you who know Wellington, no, we're not making you walk up the hill to Victoria University!)  The registration fee is yet to be confirmed, but it will include lunch (and yes, the hotel does have free wireless).

Limited accomodation is available at Rydges at the conference rate of NZD 319 (approx. AUD 300) per night; please book with Rydges directly, using the booking reference number H-VUW0117.  If you ask them, they may be able to give you one with a view of the harbour! Other accomodation options may be found here.

To get to Rydges from the airport:

By bus: The Airport Flyer shuttle (route 91) goes from the airport into the central city, and passes within a couple of blocks of the conference venue.  The cost is $9.00 (four zones); hop off at Stop J in Lambton Quay. The route map and timetable can be found here.

By taxi: it will probably take about 20 minutes (depending on traffic) and cost $25-30. 

The keynote speaker: Monica Cyrino

​We are pleased to confirm that Professor Monica Cyrino will be the keynote speaker.  Monica Cyrino (BA, UC Berkeley; PhD, Yale) is Professor of Classics at the University of New Mexico. In addition to her ongoing work on classical mythology and on eros in Greek literature, Professor Cyrino is a major, internationally recognized expert on the reception of antiquity on screen. Her many publications include In Pandora’s Jar: Lovesickness in Early Greek Poetry (1995), Big Screen Rome (2005), Aphrodite (2010), and edited volumes on both seasons of Rome. She is also co-editor for the Edinburgh University Press ‘Screening Antiquity’ series.

It is fitting that ASCS 38 features the first-ever ASCS keynote address by a reception studies specialist. Not only is Monica Cyrino a distinguished scholar and excellent speaker, but classical reception studies is a growth area in ASCS and a particular strength for the Classics Programme at Victoria University. We are thrilled that Monica will join us in 2017.

Tuesday 31 January: Special session

SPQR: Cultural Dimensions of Authority in Republican Rome

 The complex relationship between the Roman people and their political leaders remains the object of close and sometimes controversial study on the part of historians of the Roman republic.  The Royal Society of New Zealand, by way of its Marsden Grant Programme, will fund a special session, on the eve of our ASCS meeting, devoted to the further investigation of the nature and operation of popular and aristocratic authority: this special session will feature contributions by three internationally prominent scholars, Martin Jehne, Francisco Pina Polo, and Catherine Steel.  This event will take place in Rydges on the evening before the commencement of ASCS 2017, and it is free and open to all members of ASCS. A reception will follow. The programme will be:

 

SPQR: Cultural Dimensions of Authority in Republican Rome

(tea will be available before the panel commences)

3:00-3:15: Jeff Tatum: opening remarks and general introduction

3:15-4:00: Martin Jehne: Invectivity: Insults and humiliations in Roman arenas of communication in the late Republic and early Empire

4:00-4:45: Francisco Pina Polo: History belongs to those who know it exists: the people, the aristocracy, and the reconstruction of memories of the Gracchi

4:45-5:30: Catherine Steel: Nec satis populari adsensioni accommodatum: searching for ‘popular’ oratory in the Roman Republic

5:30-5:35: Jeff Tatum: closing remarks

5:35-6:30: Reception

Martin Jehne is Professor of Ancient History at the Technische-Universität Dresden. Martin is a leading authority on Roman political culture – and on the career, circumstances, designs, and personality of Julius Caesar. His well-known and frequently consulted books include Der Staat des Dictators Caesar (1987); Caesar (1997, with multiple subsequent editions), which has been translated into Spanish, Italian, and Chinese; Die römische Republik: von der Gründing zu Caesar (2006); and Der große Trend, der kleine Sachzwang und das handelnde Individuum. Caesars Entscheidungen (2006), which has been translated into Italian. Amongst the several volumes edited by Martin is the important collection of essays, Demokratie in Rom? Die Rolle des Volkes in der Politik der römischen Republik (1995).

 

 

 

Francisco Pina Polo is Professor of Ancient History at the Universidad de Zaragoza. Francho has written on nearly every aspect of republican Roman history and is the principal pioneer in the study of the Roman contio: he is the author of Las contiones civiles y militares en Roma (1989) and Contra arma verbis. Der Redner vor dem Volk in der späten römischen Republik (1996). Francho is also an expert in Roman institutional history and has recently published The Consul at Rome: The Civil Functions of the Consuls of the Roman Republic (2011). He has also written a history of the late republic, La crisis de la República (133-44 a.C.) (1999), and a detailed biography of Cicero, Marco Tulio Cicerón (2nd edition 2016), which has been translated into German.

 

 

 

Catherine Steel is Professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow. She is a recognized authority on Cicero and Roman oratory and on the political history of the late republic. Her numerous publications include Cicero, Rhetoric and Empire (2002); Reading Cicero: Genre and Performance in Late Republican Rome (2005); Roman Oratory (2006); and The End of the Roman Republic, 146-44 B.C.: Conquest and Crisis (2013). Catherine is also the lead investigator of an international research project devoted to The Fragments of the Republican Roman Orators, funded by the European Research Council.

Jeff Tatum is Professor of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington.  His research concentrates on the literature and history of the Roman republic.  His publications include The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (1999), Always I am Caesar (2008), and, most recently and with Chris Pelling, Plutarch: The Rise of Rome (2013).  He is currently the recipient of a Marsden Grant to study election practices in republican Rome.

This presentation explores how Takeuchi Hideki’s Thermae Romae (2012) uses the epic cinematic site of ancient Rome to project and confront its empire nostalgia. Ancient Rome on screen has often functioned as a lens through which filmmakers of different nationalities could negotiate their relationships with the ideas of power and empire, and the screening of ancient Rome still influences the way nations can both promote their own identities and also reflect upon their past histories. The film Thermae Romae screens Roman antiquity in a new way in order to interrogate Japan’s current relationship, both proud and painful, with its memories of Empire.

This presentation considers the relationship between ancient Rome and modern Japan as presented in Thermae Romae, the successful film adaptation of Yamazaki Mari’s best-selling six-volume manga of the same title (2008-13). The film, a time-traveling comic fantasy, is set in the year 128 AD in the time of Emperor Hadrian, and introduces the character Lucius Modestus (Hiroshi Abe), a prominent Roman bathhouse architect who is disheartened by his lack of new ideas. Under pressure to satisfy the Emperor’s hunger for innovation, Lucius tries to relax away his troubles in the Roman thermae, when he is sucked through a drain/time-tunnel and emerges into a present-day Japanese public bathhouse.

This presentation examines the way the film interrogates the theme of empire nostalgia: how the casting of the statuesque Abe and other Roman roles with established Japanese actors, speaking both Japanese and Latin, encourages the visual and aural identification of the two cultures; how the filming location at Cinecittà studios in Rome promotes a link with the golden age of “Hollywood on the Tiber” productions and their nationalist strategies; how the adaptation from the hip native genre of manga to the conservative epic cinema effects a crucial shift in tone and compels a greater focus on the narrative of empire; and how setting the film in the Hadrianic reign permits the use of the “Gladiator formula,” that is, the negotiation of the “good vs. bad” imperial models. This presentation highlights the endurance of the Roman epic cinematic model by demonstrating that it is a valuable site for the projection of modern anxieties and aspirations even in contemporary Japanese film.

'Tokyo on the Tiber: Screening Rome as Empire Nostalgia in Takeuchi Hideki's THERMAE ROMAE (2012)'.

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