Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity

Call For Papers: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity is sponsoring two panels in 2017. 1) Blasphemy (Co-sponsored with AAR's Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence group): Religious violence is often facilitated by the discursive constructions of "Others." A classic mechanism for constructing Others is the charge of blasphemy, in which the Other is said to have spoken or acted in a way that is deemed sacrilegious. We invite papers that explore charges of blasphemy in religious discourse, particularly those that pay attention to the work that such charges perform in the context of (inter)religious violence, competition, or conflict. 2) Precarity and Violence in Antiquity: Recent scholarship on violence has focused on the means by which people or groups are rendered as legitimate subjects of violence (for example, Butler’s notion of precarity or Agamben’s theorization of bare life). While a modern concept, precarity offers a helpful lens through which to investigate the varying degrees and types of violence ancient people might have experienced. Literary and documentary texts as well as other material objects reveal how women, slaves, “barbarians,” and others, who were precariously situated in relation to local and imperial governance, lived with violence. We invite submissions that explore the ways in which ancient people, groups, or things were framed as legitimate targets of violence. Papers could focus on legitimations in a number of different contexts: incitements to violence by ecclesiastical figures, local authorities, or state actors; constructions rooted in group competition; the fantasies and erotics of violence, etc.

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