“Locating the Individual in Roman Funerary Culture:
Patronage, Consumption, and Agency”
10-11 May 2012
Organizers: Stine Birk & Niels Bargfeldt
Venues: Aarhus University & Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

“Mapping Movement and Sacred Topography:
Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Perspectives on Ancient Pilgrimage”
9 June 2012
Organizers: Troels Myrup Kristensen & Wiebke Friese
Venue: Universität Hamburg

The Classical Studies seminar will also enter its inaugural season with the following dates:
Thursday 9 February 3 pm / Jacob Isager (Odense) on Vitruvius.
Thursday 8 March 3 pm / Jan Stubbe Østergaard (Copenhagen) on polychromy.
Thursday 22 March 3 pm / Antony Spawforth (Newcastle) on Augustan Greece.
Thursday 12 April 3 pm / David Bloch (Copenhagen) on Aristoles and the Aristotelian tradition.
Wednesday 2 May 3 pm / Ida Östenberg (Gothenburg) on Roman defeat.

On 25 March, a group of international scholars came to Aarhus to participate in the seminar “The Afterlife of Roman Sculpture II: Late Antique Response and Reception“. The organizers would like to thank everybody for their contributions to what was a very fruitful meeting! The seminar was generously funded by the Danish Research Council. Additional funding was provided by the Institute of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Linguistics, AU, and the Canada Research Chair in Roman Archaeology. More photos from the seminar are available here.

“This book explores the relationship between the city of Rome and the Aurelian Wall during the six centuries following its construction in the 270s AD, a period when the city changed and contracted almost beyond recognition, as it evolved from imperial capital into the spiritual center of Western Christendom. The Wall became the single most prominent feature in the urban landscape, a dominating presence which came bodily to incarnate the political, legal, administrative and religious boundaries of urbs Roma, even as it reshaped both the physical contours of the city as a whole and the mental geographies of ‘Rome’ that prevailed at home and throughout the known world. With the passage of time, the circuit took on a life of its own as the embodiment of Rome’s past greatness, a cultural and architectural legacy that dwarfed the quotidian realities of the post-imperial city as much as it shaped them.”

CALL FOR PAPERS
International Seminar
Department of Classical Archaeology, Aarhus University
Friday 25 March 2011

In 2008, Aarhus University hosted a seminar on “The Afterlife of Roman Sculpture: Late Antique Perceptions and Practices” that aimed to look at the variety of late antique perceptions of statuary, focusing on a few select regional case studies – from Alexandria in the east to Britain in the north – , and such diverse phenomena as collecting, deposition and destruction. This follow-up seminar is envisaged as providing an opportunity for both senior and junior scholars to arrive at a broader understanding of the fate of Graeco-Roman statuary during the period between the fourth and the seventh centuries AD. It is hoped that by integrating both textual and archaeological approaches, as well as empirical and theoretical methodologies, it is possible to provide a rich and multifaceted picture of the changes in the sculptural landscape of the Classical world.

The seminar will consist of three keynote papers by Prof. John Pollini (USC, Los Angeles), Prof. Franz Alto Bauer (LMU, Munich) and Prof. Ortwin Dally (DAI, Berlin), and five 30-minute papers. Abstracts for papers and short CVs are therefore invited for submission by 8 September 2010. Accepted speakers will be provided with full funding including travel costs and accommodation at Aarhus, thanks to the generous support of the Danish Research Council.

Please send proposals to Troels Myrup Kristensen (klatmk@hum.au.dk), Assistant Professor, PhD, Department of Classical Archaeology, Aarhus University

Hendrik Dey, “Art, Ceremony, and City Walls: The Aesthetics of Imperial Resurgence in the Late Roman West”, Journal of Late Antiquity 3.1 (2010): 3-37.

Troels Myrup Kristensen, “Embodied Images: Christian Destruction and Response in Late Antique Egypt”, Journal of Late Antiquity 2.2 (2009): 224-250.

A conference organized under the auspices of the research programme “Art and Social Identities in Late Antiquity” funded by the Danish Research Council.

The conference will focus on the active role of art and architecture in Late Antiquity and situate the use of images in the period’s dynamic political, religious and social life. The seminar aims to cross interdisciplinary boundaries and arrive at an original and comprehensive view of late antique society. Through images and the responses to them, we ask the invited contributors to focus on questions such as: Why were works of art made? Who commissioned them, and how were they looked at? The papers should try to illuminate the contexts in which works of art were created, and how they were valued and viewed. These questions could be applied to the various places of exchange (sacred and secular) where identities were taken on and transformed, often through the mediation of images.

Preliminary list of speakers:
Johanna Auinger (Vienna, Austria)
Sarah Bassett (Wayne State, USA)
Franz Alto Bauer (Munich, Germany)
Hendrik Dey (Aarhus, Denmark)
Katherine Dunbabin (McMaster, Canada)
Niels Hannestad (Aarhus, Denmark)
Ine Jacobs (Leuven, Belgium)
Troels Myrup Kristensen (Aarhus, Denmark)
Paolo Liverani (Florence, Italy)
Simon Malmberg (Swedish Institute, Italy)
Arnaldo Marcone (Roma Tre, Italy)
Trinidad Nogales (Merida, Spain)
Birte Poulsen (Aarhus, Denmark)
Stine Birk Toft (Aarhus, Denmark)
Eric Varner (Emory, USA)
John Weisweiler (Cambridge, UK)

Session: 3I: Approaches to Workshops in Roman Art
Type: Colloquium

Timeslot: Saturday, January 5, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Organizers: Troels Myrup Kristensen and Birte Poulsen, University of Aarhus

Session Papers
1. Sculptural Workshops during the Later Roman Period
Niels Hannestad, University of Aarhus

2. Workshops, Artists, and Patrons in Roman Britain
Martin Henig, University of Oxford

3. Adaptable Craftsmen: The Production of Sculpture and Sarcophagi in the Late Roman Empire
Stine Birk Toft, University of Aarhus

4. Identifying Mosaic Workshops: An Eastern Perspective
Birte Poulsen, University of Aarhus

5. Workshops and Artisans in Roman Art: An Anthropological Approach
Troels Myrup Kristensen, University of Aarhus

The Department of Classical Archaeology at the University of Aarhus recently received a generous grant from the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation to launch a research project on “Honestiores and Humiliores – Art and Social Identities in Late Antiquity”. This was celebrated on Friday afternoon at the project’s official opening reception at the university’s Museum of Ancient Art. We are grateful to the Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation for supporting our project and to everyone who stopped by at the opening.