Jocasta Classical Reception Greece – International Conference on Classical Reception and the Human

 International Conference on Classical Reception and the Human

Friday, June 10, 2016 to Sunday, June 12, 2016 

Room: II.9, Conference and Cultural Centre of the University of Patras, Greece 

Download full programme and abstracts here.

Info about Accommodation, Transportation and Conference Buildings

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

Jocasta Classical Reception Greece based at the University of Patras is pleased to announce an International Conference on 10-12 June 2016 which seeks to explore the interrelatedness of Classical Reception and the Human.

In the very first line of the choric stasimon from Sophocles’ Antigone we read the susceptible to differentiated translational reception choices phrase «πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει». With the advent of digital technologies and the recent developments in biomedical and neurological science, the notion of the human becomes highly contested. At the same time, the continuous growth of racist, sexist, terrorist, economic, cultural, and other discriminatory practices forges our forgetting of the human. With B. Knox’s comment at the 1980 American Philological Association that “classical texts are the humanities” in mind, this international conference seeks to address the issue of how classical reception from early modernity onwards informs and re-shapes our conceptualization of the human.

We focus on the following research questions:

• How has classical reception (e.g. newly-translated Greek texts, Neo-Latin drama, early modern tragic adaptations) influenced Renaissance humanistic discourses, thought and culture?
• How have re-readings of antiquity informed literary, theatrical or other reconfigurations of the human in 18th and 19th century?
• Are the adaptations of Greco-Roman drama a locus for the contemplation, expression and vindication of human rights?
• How do ideological appropriations of the past allow for the legitimization of fascist agendas and the perpetuation of inhumanities?
• How can the classics help us rethink the (post)human in theory and practice after the demise of liberal individualism and the emergence of multiple permeated digital and non-digital, organic and inorganic subjectivities?

The Organisers
Efimia D. Karakantza
Efstathia Athanasopoulou

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