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Information on Seminars

The Program Committee has approved two proposals to offer seminars at the 2012 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.  Full details of these sessions appear below.  Seminars are intended to provide an opportunity for extensive discussion of the papers to be presented.  To this end attendance at the seminars will be limited, and the speakers in these sessions have been asked to make their papers available by November so that registrants who attend the sessions can read them in advance.  Each will present only a brief summary of his or her paper at the session itself. 

To ensure the success of these sessions, the Program Committee requests the following commitments from annual meeting registrants interested in attending a seminar.

  1. Ask the Seminar Leader via e-mail to reserve a place for you at the session.  The organizer's e-mail address follows his name in the descriptions below.
  2. Read each of the seminar papers in advance of the meeting.  Registrants whose requests to participate are accepted will receive copies of the seminar papers after November 18, 2011.
  3. Attend the entire 3-hour session in Philadelphia.  The Program Committee feels strongly that the success of the seminars will depend in large part on the willingness of all participants to participate actively for the entire session.  In addition, persons accepted for attendance at a seminar may be taking the place of another registrant who wished to attend the session.  There will be a brief break scheduled about halfway through each session. 

Below is the list of speakers and topics for each seminar as well as a brief summary of the session prepared by the organizer:

Friday, January 6, 2012, 1:30pm-4:30pm

Reconstructing Herculaneum Papyri: A Practical Introduction
Organizers:  Richard Janko, University of Michigan, rjanko@umich.edu
Jeffrey Fish, Baylor University

Illustrated presentations will reveal the methods used to reconstruct two different Herculaneum rolls by Philodemus, On the Good King According to Homerand On PoemsII. Time will be allowed for reading and discussing unpublished fragments of each work, which will be distributed in advance. New conjectural restorations will be very welcome, and care will be taken to ensure, in the eventual publications, that they are credited to those who first suggested them. Expert knowledge of philosophical Greek is not a prerequisite.

  1. Jeffrey Fish, Baylor University
    The Reconstruction of Philodemus’ On the Good King According to Homer
  2. Richard Janko, University of Michigan
    Reconstructing Philodemus’ On Poems Book 2

Saturday, January 7, 2012, 1:30pm-4:30pm

The Subject Objects: Puellae in Roman Elegy and Beyond
Organizer:  Megan O. Drinkwater, Agnes Scott College, mdrinkwater@agnesscott.edu

This seminar proposes new directions for further study of Roman elegy’s puella. The first paper reviews significant concepts of the puella, laying bare the assumptions that underpin them. The second examines the emergence of the puellaas the central figure in Roman erotic poetry, arguing for “puellapoetry” as a productive category of its own. The third considers how elegy’s culta puellamight manage the tension between her admiration for literary sophistication and her need to support herself by sex. The final contribution discusses the material evidence for elegiac puellaeas luxury imports available as a result of Roman imperialism.

  1. Megan O. Drinkwater, Agnes Scott College
    Introduction
  2. Paul Allen Miller, University of South Carolina
    Assuming the Puella
  3. Thea S. Thorsen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
    Puella Poetry – A Useful Term for the History of Latin Literature?
  4. Sharon L. James, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    Can the Docta Puella Really Love Poetry?
  5. Alison M. Keith, University of Toronto
    Contemporary Italian Epigraphic Evidence for the Names of Elegiac Puellae
  6. Laurel Fulkerson, Florida State University, Respondent

Last updated November 16, 2011.


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