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25. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY. The religious Other in Classical and Late Antiquity
Panel Convenors
João Diogo Loureiro (Centre of Classical and Humanistic Studies - University of Coimbra) [loureiro.joaodiogo@gmail.com]
Miguel Monteiro (Centre of Classical and Humanistic Studies - University of Coimbra) [miguelsena@gmail.com]
Jesse Mirotznik (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations - Harvard University) [jim400@mail.harvard.edu]
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The way any given community portrays those outside the group tells us at least as much about the latter as the former. A community defines itself, in part, by contrast with those that do not belong to it and especially by contrast with those that its members take to be their direct opponents. These are rarely pictured or described in neutral terms: modern scholars can only look at them «through a glass darkly» and, using other sources and evidence, reveal the agenda behind the way they are presented.
In recent decades, there has been considerable work within the field of Classical Studies on representations of the Other. Building upon that tradition, we want in this panel to critically re-examine ancient discourses on the religious Other. Though we expect most of the proposals submitted to deal with how Christians and pagans saw each other or how any given Christian group depicted Christians with other beliefs or practices, we are open to proposals that consider how any faith community of the Ancient World represented those of another creed. This means that we could accept a paper on, for example, early Christian responses to the rise of Islam or on the practice of interpretatio graeca by Greek authors trying to make sense of other pagan religions. In special cases, we would even accept papers on how a community represented a specific individual with «unorthodox» beliefs (think of Socrates and his «new gods») or papers analysing the criticism directed at traditional religion by more philosophical-minded authors, e.g. Xenophanes.
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- Abstracts should be sent to: loureiro.joaodiogo@gmail.com
- Languages accepted: English and Portuguese
- Duration of the paper: 20mn
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Abstracts should have:
- Title of communication
- University
- Abstracts (max 250 words)
- Keywords (5 to 10 words)
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