Children and Families in the Ancient World

Call For Papers: The new unit will host one or two sessions that will combine invited papers and an open call. We welcome proposals on the full range of topics and sources - Hebrew Bible/New Testament, early Jewish and classical - covered by the unit's theme. Childhood and family historians have but recently turned their attention to the goldmine of information that lies hidden in late antique sources. So far this research has led to promising results, both from the angle of family and childhood metaphors in early Christian discourse and in the field of the social reality of families. Thanks to the abundance of material, it seems as if late antique sources constitute an almost inexhaustible reservoir of information for very diverse aspects concerning family life – information that even applies to earlier periods. Yet this wealth has not been fully explored in scholarly publications, which often contain the same stock of references. Further, a large number of writers from the late Republic and the Principate have not been studied profoundly in connection with childhood and families. Thus, also proposals within this area are much welcomed.

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