Calls for Abstracts for APA Committee Sessions
APA committees have the option of issuing calls for abstracts for the panels they organize at the annual meeting. The Committees on Outreach and on the Classical Tradition and Reception have chosen to do so. Members responding to these calls for abstracts should be aware that the committee issuing the call must submit all abstracts it accepts for additional review by the Program Committee. If a member’s paper is accepted by the committee issuing the call, and if the Program Committee accepts the panel, the member may not submit another abstract for consideration for any other session.
Bodies in Motion: Contemporary Approaches to Choral Performance
Organized by M. Hopman (Northwestern University) and F. Schironi (University of Michigan)
Sponsored by the Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance
The classical chorus’ combination of text, music, and dancing is a rare phenomenon in the history of Western theater. The experience was indeed short-lived: choral parts separated the scenes but were not integral to the action in the late comedies of Aristophanes and in Menander; papyri containing choral lyrics prove that anthologies of dramatic choral odes were circulating in the Roman period; choruses sang but did not dance in Roman pantomimes; and with a few exceptions, modern Western theater has dispensed with the chorus altogether. The development of opera in the seventeenth century, followed by the rise of the ballet in the late eighteenth century, led to an institutionalized division between the performing arts. As a result, the Greek chorus often was perceived as an embarrassment in nineteenth and twentieth-century productions of ancient plays.
More recently, however, several productions have offered powerful and highly corporeal interpretations of Greek choruses, often inspired by non-Western dancing traditions. Richard Schechner’s Dionysus in 69 (1968), Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides (1990-1992), Katie Mitchell’s Oresteia (2000), Wlodzimierz Staniewski’s Elektra (2002) and Iphigenia at Aulis (2007), and Anne Bogart’s Antigone (2009) are but a few examples of productions that have used the Greek chorus to offer a new form of theater emphasizing collective movement, redefining theatrical space, and questioning the relation between spectators and performers.
Turning our focus to the present moment, we invite panelists to describe and discuss contemporary productions of Greek drama (tragedy and comedy) that emphasize the physicality/corporeality of the chorus. Topics that may be addressed include, but are certainly not limited to, the following: How is collective movement used in the production? Are the choral moves inspired by a particular performative tradition or technique? Do the movements of the chorus respond to specific cues in the Greek text or its translation(s)? Does the chorus contribute to a particular meaning (artistic, political, social, economic) of the dramatic performance as a whole? Can this contemporary rendering of the chorus help us revisit the original ancient performance with fresh eyes?
Please submit abstracts by e-mail attachment by February 8, 2012 to Judith Hallett, jeph@umd.edu. Abstracts should be only one page in length and must not include the author’s name. In accordance with APA regulations, all abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. Please follow the APA guidelines for formatting abstracts, available on-line at: http://apaclassics.org/index.php/annual_meeting/instructions_for_authors_of_abstracts.
Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World,
Organizers: Paul Christesen, Dartmouth College and Garrett Fagan, Pennsylvania State University
Sponsored by the APA Committee on Outreach
Over the last 40 years the study of ancient sport and spectacle has grown and matured into a thriving sub-discipline of Classics. Interest in ancient sport and spectacle has been stimulated not only by the immense social significance of these activities in the Greek and Roman worlds, but also by their great importance in the modern world. Our own experience as athletes and spectators can offer an intuitive connection to our counterparts from classical antiquity that may otherwise be elusive, and sport and spectacle can thus constitute a bridge, admittedly at times a treacherous one, between ancient and modern.
For that reason the study of sport and spectacle forms an ideal subject for an APA Outreach Panel, and now is an ideal time to construct such a panel, because there is reason to believe that the study of ancient sport and spectacle is rapidly approaching an inflection point. Until quite recently, there has been a tendency for scholars to analyze ancient sport and spectacle without paying much attention to the societal context in which these activities took place. The focus was on issues such as the precise sequence of events at the ancient Olympics or the seating arrangements in the Coliseum.That approach was reasonable, indeed necessary, when our knowledge of ancient sport and spectacle was limited. However, scholars have now scrutinized much of the relevant body of evidence, which increases slowly, mostly due to archaeological excavation, and work along established lines already brings sharply diminishing returns.
At the same time, what we have learned in the past 40 years has made it possible to ask new, bigger questions about the relationship between sport and spectacle on the one hand, and society on the other. We are now, for example, in a position to take what we know about the involvement about Greek colonists in places such as Egypt in the Olympics, and think about how athletics helped Greeks who settled overseas maintain a sense of cultural identity while living in a foreign land. This approach to the study of ancient sport and spectacle, what might be described as writing a social history of sport and spectacle, has become increasingly common in the last decade and shows every sign of becoming the dominant approach in the years to come.
We are seeking papers from those who have played a pioneering role in writing the social history of sport and spectacle, and from those whose work is currently extending and redefining the field. Our panel will thus serve two, complementary functions: that of building bridges between ancient and modern, and between the scholarly community and the wider public, while also affording a glimpse of the future in an important, rapidly evolving sub-discipline of Classics.
The proposed panel will be comprised of participants selected through anonymous refereeing as well as invited speakers and respondents. The latter category includes Mark Golden, David Potter and perhaps Don Kyle. Those interested in submitting an abstract for anonymous refereeing are invited to send, as an email attachment, by no later than December 15, 2011, an abstract of no more than one page in length to Judith P. Hallett, jeph@umd.edu Please do not indicate your name on the abstract itself.
Islamic and Arabic Receptions of Classical Literature
Organizer: Paul Kimball, Bilkent University
Sponsored by the APA Committee on Classical Tradition and Reception
The American Philological Association’s Committee on Classical Tradition and Reception invites submissions for a panel to be held at the 2013 annual meeting of the APA in Seattle, Washington, on the topic of “Islamic and Arabic Receptions of Classical Literature.”
We seek contributions which examine the Arabic translation of Greek literature as an active process of creative production, not simply as a vehicle for preserving and transmitting lost (or better) witnesses of classical texts. Such a perspective has been most forcefully and persuasively championed over the past two decades by A. I. Sabra and Dimitri Gutas, both insisting that any properly historical treatment of the Arabic reception of Greek texts must take into account the precise contexts informing the conscious appropriation and adaptation of these ancient works for specific constituencies and audiences. At the same time, we encourage papers that question the role played by Islam in this process, that is the degree to which "Islam " as such can explain the selection, rejection, and/or modification of Classical material by Arabic translators. We hope that the panel will underline the need for an essentially contextual, i.e. historical, approach to classical receptions, and will offer implications for understanding other cultural receptions as well.
Proposals for papers taking no more than twenty minutes to deliver should be sent via email attachment (in Word or Open Office format) to Dr. Paul Kimball (pkimball@bilkent.edu.tr) no later than January 15, 2011. Please follow the APA Program Committee's suggestions for preparing individual abstracts as specified in the APA Program Guide. APA membership is normally required to participate and must be verified before proposals are considered. However, waivers may be granted to scholars residing outside North America or working in allied fields such as Islamic history or Arabic studies. All submissions will be subject to double-blind review by two referees and the panel as a whole evaluated by the APA Program Committee before notification of final acceptance.
Last updated January 29, 2012.
