ASCS 38 (2017) – Call for Papers (download Word version at left)
The 38th Annual Meeting and Conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies will be hosted by Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, from 31 Jan - 3 Feb 2017. The conference convener is Dr Diana Burton. Please direct enquires to her at ascs2017@vuw.ac.nz. Further details will be placed from time to time on this website and on the ASCS website (www.ascs.org.au, click on the ‘News Flash’ on the home page.
The deadline for submission of abstracts has now closed. No further abstracts will be accepted.
Withdrawal of Offers
To avoid disruption to the draft program (and to preserve the convenor's sanity) by last-minute withdrawals, please note the following requirements:
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No offer of a paper will be accepted finally until the conference registration fee has been paid.
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Refund of the registration fee will be available up to six weeks before the conference (less an administrative fee).
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There will be no refund of the registration fee for a withdrawal from the conference less than six weeks before the conference, except in the case of illness or serious misadventure.
Deadline for Offers of Papers and Review Procedure
All offers of papers must be received by Monday 1 August 2016. Any offers which come in after that date unfortunately will have to be rejected.
The following requirements will be in place again for this conference. Only one offer will be accepted from any one person. You do not need to be a member of ASCS to submit an abstract, but your membership must be in good standing if you are attending the conference and presenting a paper unless you reside in a country other than Australia or New Zealand. If you wish to join ASCS ahead of the meeting in Wellington, follow the relevant instructions on the ASCS website (www.ascs.org.au, under ‘membership’).
Members may also propose a panel of papers on a particular theme. The panel structure will need to conform to the 90 minutes allocated to each session. Applications to have a panel considered must conform to the guidelines for panels at ASCS.
We invite archaeological reports as a specific category of presentation. We recognise that the submitted abstracts may be projections due to the fact that the field season will possibly take place after the call for papers has closed. Please read the guidelines for this category before submitting your proposal.
We also invite you to consider proposing a poster presentation instead of a paper.
All offers of papers will be anonymously reviewed by the conference program review committee. Its task is to make decisions about the suitability (or not) of the papers offered.
Professor Elizabeth Minchin has been appointed Chair of the review committee.
The Honorary Secretary Kathryn Welch will co-ordinate this committee but will not be a member of it. If you have any questions about the procedure for submitting an abstract, please send them to her via the Abstracts email address (abstracts@ascs.org.au) which she will check regularly. Please do not send correspondence associated with the abstract review process to her regular email address.
Content of Abstracts
Offers of papers, posters, panels and archaeological reports should be accompanied by an abstract of 150-250 words. Abstracts over the limit will be returned to the person making the offer to be reworded to fit the maximum and delays in conforming to this limit could lead to the rejection of the offer. On the other hand, abstracts should not be so short that the review committee will not get the real gist of what you want to argue. Advice on what should be contained in an abstract is given below as a guide, particularly for those with less experience in offering conference papers.
Remember that the readers of your paper will not know who you are, nor anything about your reputation as a speaker. They will have only the abstract or, in the event that it is part of a panel, the panel description and associated abstracts. You need to convince them that you have something worthwhile to say, that it is in touch with relevant works of scholarship (where relevant), and that your argument can be delivered in 20 minutes.
The abstract should contain the following information:
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a clear statement of the problem you seek to solve or the question you want to answer
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a brief explanation of the abstract’s evidence base and its relationship to the existing literature on the topic
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an indication of how you intend to resolve the issue and what about your argument is new or worth hearing.
You should include short citations of the modern works which are seminal to the argument. Choose them carefully. We want to know that you are in touch with the most appropriate scholarship. We do not need a full list and require that you select only three.
Full bibliographical details (which do not count in the word limit) of these works should be supplied at the end of the abstract.
Submission of Abstracts
Abstracts should be sent to the dedicated conference abstracts email address (abstracts@ascs.org.au). Your abstract should use the ASCS 38 abstract coversheet located here. The coversheet can also be found via the ASCS website.
You are asked to nominate up to three areas of study (listed on the coversheet) which best fit the content and intention of your study. Your nominations will directly affect who initially assesses your abstract and, if the paper is accepted, can determine where you are placed on the conference program.
Withdrawal of Offers
To avoid disruption to the draft program (and to preserve the convenor's sanity) by last-minute withdrawals, please note the following requirements:
-
No offer of a paper will be accepted finally until the conference registration fee has been paid.
-
Refund of the registration fee will be available up to six weeks before the conference (less an administrative fee).
-
There will be no refund of the registration fee for a withdrawal from the conference less than six weeks before the conference, except in the case of illness or serious misadventure.
Sample abstracts
Below are listed some websites containing abstract guidelines, which may be particularly useful for those submitting an offer and abstract for the first time.
Style Guide (adapted from UWA website)
Books and e-books:
S. Ratnagar, Trading Encounters: From the Euphrates to the Indus in the Bronze Age (New Delhi 2004)
Books, edited:
J.M. Foley (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Epic (Oxford 2009)
Books, translator and author.
Y. Arakawa, Zen Painting, trans. J. Bester (Tokyo 1970)
Chapter in book:
J. Baker, ‘The Place of Science and Technology in the Wise Management of the Great Barrier Reef’, in E. Wolanski (ed.), Oceanographic Processes of Coral Reefs: Physical and Biological Links in the Great Barrier Reef (Boca Raton 2001) 14-20
Journal article:
S. Mintz, ‘Food Enigmas, Colonial and Postcolonial’, Gastronomica 10 (2010) 149-50
Journal article (website):
K.R. Moore, ‘Was Pythagoras Ever Really in Sparta?’, Rosetta 6 (2009) http://www.rosetta.bham.ac.uk, (accessed 10 September 2010)