Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity

Call For Papers: The Violence and Representations of Violence Section is sponsoring three sessions: 1) an open session on the topic of “self-directed violence and pain,” co-sponsored with the AAR Unit Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence; 2) an open session on the topic “public violence,” co-sponsored with the Early Jewish and Christian Relations Section of the SBL; 3) an open session on the legacies of remembered violence. The CFPs for each of these sessions are as follows: 1) Self-directed Violence and Pain: This joint session, co-sponsored with AAR Unit “Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence,” invites papers that investigate religiously rooted practices of self-directed pain, such as self-flagellations, bodily piercings, and bodily transformations or alterations within rites of passage. 2) Public Violence: This joint session, co-sponsored by “Early Jewish and Christian Relations” and “Violence and Representations of Violence among Jews and Christians,” invites submissions that address acts of or incitements to inter-communal violence as these unfolded within the "public" spaces of ancient Mediterranean society (e.g., cities, marketplaces, rural shrines). What social and discursive factors triggered or constrained the outbreak of events such as urban riots, acts of "vigilante" violence, or the destruction of communal buildings? And how do accounts of public violence support or subvert political or religious institutional structures? 3) Legacies of Remembered Violence: This open session invites submissions that explore how violent acts are remembered, recounted, and represented in particular ways. What might account for the mismatch or slippage between event and memory? What sort of legacies do such acts of representation invite? How does the recycling of narrated violence contribute to further violence, if and when it does?

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