24th ANNUAL JOINT POSTGRADUATE SYMPOSIUM ON ANCIENT PERFORMANCE, JUNE 2024: ‘Bodies and Voices in the Theory and Practice of Greek and Roman Performance and its Reception’
The 24th Annual Joint Postgraduate Symposium on Ancient Performance and Reception, hosted by the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London, will take place on Thursday 27 and Friday 28 June 2024. This year’s theme will be: ‘Bodies and Voices in the Theory and Practice of Greek and Roman Performance and its Reception(s).’
This Symposium focuses on the reception of Greek and Roman tragedy, comedy, satyr play, epic, lyric, and other texts in performance, exploring their afterlives through re-workings by writers and practitioners across all genres and periods. This year’s theme seeks to explore the relationship between bodies and voices, broadly conceived, asking what the interaction between them might mean in the context of the reception of the ancient past. We invite participants to consider any of the following
prompts:
- (Dis)connections between body and voice in performance
- Voices on and off stage
- The physical body and costume
- Silenced and marginalised voices and unseen bodies
- Gendered, racialised, disabled, and queer bodies
- Questions of embodiment and voicing
- The body politic, the communal voice, dissenting voices, polyphony
- Explorations of bodies and voices from perspectives of postcolonialism, critical race theory, disability studies, queer theory, feminism, posthumanism
The guest respondent on Day 1 in Oxford will be Dr Sarah Cullinan Herring (Oxford), and Dr Marcus Bell (Goldsmiths/Oxford) will be our guest respondent on Day 2 at Royal Holloway. Day 1 will include a guest lecture by Professor Konstantinos Thomaidis (Exeter).
Masters and PhD students from around the world are welcome to participate, as are those who have completed a doctorate but have not yet taken up a post. The symposium is open to speakers from different disciplines, including researchers in the fields of classics, classical reception, modern languages and literature, and theatre and performance studies. Practitioners are welcome to contribute their personal experience of working on ancient drama. Papers may include demonstrations or recorded material. Undergraduates are very welcome to attend. This year’s symposium will be in person and online, although we encourage participants to attend in person where possible. We hope to be able to offer a small bursary for travel from afar.
Those who wish to offer a short paper (15 mins) or performance presentation are invited to send an abstract of up to 200 words outlining the proposed subject of their discussion to postgradsympclassics.ox.ac.uk by Friday 19 April 2024. If applicable, please include details of your current course of study, supervisor, and academic institution. There will be no registration fee. Please indicate in your application whether you would like to be considered for a travel bursary.
CONTACT FOR ENQUIRIES: postgradsympclassics.ox.ac.uk