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OIKOS workshop "Ecocriticism and Classical Literature"

When:Fr 21-05-2021
Where:online (Zoom)

Workshop

On May 21, 2021, 11:00-16:30, the OIKOS research group Classical Literature: Theory and Contexts will hold an exploratory workshop about Classical Literature and Ecocriticism. During this  workshop, OIKOS members will experiment with ecocriticial and environmentally inflected readings of classical literature. We aim to explore what the study of Greek and Roman texts can bring to current ecocritical debates, and what we, as scholars of antiquity and its receptions, can learn from viewing our object of study from an environmental perspective.

The workshop will be held on Zoom. If you would like to join for all or part of the programme, please register (via B.L.Reitz-Joosse rug.nl) by the 20th of May.

Keynote

The keynote will be delivered by Dr Kristine Steenbergh, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and co-founder of the Environmental Humanities Centre . Her research focuses on early modern literature and culture, the history of emotions, ecocriticism, and the environmental  humanities.

Program

11:00-12:00

SESSION 1: ECOCRITICISM - WHAT AND WHY?

Bettina Reitz-Joosse (RUG): Welcome and introduction (5 minutes)  

Kristine Steenbergh (VU):
Ecocritical Beginnings: Classical and Early Modern (20 minutes)

Breakout rooms (15 minutes) and discussion (15 minutes)

12:00 – 12:30

Lunch

12:30-13:30

SESSION 2: ANCIENT ANIMAL ETHICS? REPRESENTATIONS OF  HUNTING AND FISHING

Chair: Jacqueline Klooster

Massimiliano Carbonari (RUG): Taming the wild? Some thoughts on Homeric hunting similes and Mycenaean wall paintings (20 minutes)

Sean McGrath (TC Dublin): The aquatic apocalypse: fishing with poison in Oppian’s Halieutica (20 minutes)

Discussion: 20 minutes

13:45-14:45

SESSION 2: READING POETIC LANDSCAPES

Chair: Christoph Pieper

Marco Formisano (Gent): Litora summa legens: landscape and boundary in Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae (20 minutes) Discussion: 5 minutes  

Mark Heerink (UvA) en Pieter van den Broek (UvA): Vesuvius in Flavian Epic (10 minutes)

Louis Verreth (UL): Green Politics in Renaissance Florence: Reading the Landscape in Neo Latin Medici Panegyrics (10 minutes) Discussion: 15 minutes

15:00-16:00

SESSION 3: NARRATIVES OF NATURECULTURE

Chair: Floris Overduin

Bart Blokland (UU): Representation of Nature and Climate in the Potter’s Oracle (10 minutes)

Jikke Koning (UL): The Concept of Nature and Faith in Cultural Progress in Greek Tragedy (20 minutes)

Discussion and conclusion: 25 minutes

16:00-16:30

Drinks