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Meeting Program Units

2014 International Meeting

Vienna, Austria

Meeting Begins7/6/2014
Meeting Ends7/10/2014

Call for Papers Opens: 10/28/2013
Call for Papers Closes: 2/11/2014

Requirements for Participation

Place, Space, and Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean World


Program Unit Type: Section
Accepting Papers? Yes

Call For Papers: Three themes will be discussed (a general and two more two more specialized spatial themes). • First theme: "'This World' and 'Other Worlds' in Ancient Spatial Perceptions/Conceptions." We invite papers that explore the connections between 'this world' and 'other worlds' in spatial imagination. How do 'imagined' textual spaces relate to 'real' social spaces of the ancient world? Analysis of particular examples are welcome as well as more theoretical discussions relating to how we access ancient spaces - e.g. using sociological, literary, archaeological methods and approaches. • Second theme: "Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World: Towards Spaces of Healing and Wholeness" (joint session of the Place, Space and Identity and the Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World sections). We invite papers that explore (but are not limited to) topics such as: places of healing; places of isolation and/or exclusion; illness, disability and impurity; the interaction between locality and physiology; narrative space – stories of illness, disability and healing. • Third theme: "Place, Space and Ritual in the Ancient Mediterranean World." Even if scholars in Ritual Studies disagree on a single definition of the concept "ritual," all would probably agree that rituals are closely tied to the spaces or places where rituals take place. Most religious rituals are performed at sacred spaces, rituals within a family often happen at a specific space in that family's home, even personal rituals are bound to happen repeatedly at the same place. Papers in this section will explore how spaces/places function in the performance of rituals, how they transform ritual action and how they, at times, are transformed themselves by the rituals that happen within them. We welcome papers that creatively combine aspects of the proposed themes, e.g. the relationship between space, illness and ritual; imagined "other worlds" as a spatial transcending of illness and disability.

Program Unit Chairs

Gert T. M. Prinsloo
Karen Wenell

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