Conference

Spring 2023 Conference

Building Bodies: Investigating Bodies in the Ancient Mediterranean

Held via Zoom, March 24-25, 2023

Register for Keynote with Dr. Debby Sneed here

Email us at brynmawrspeac@gmail.com to register for panels!

In lieu of a registration fee, we recommend contributing to Bi-College Mutual Aid (@bicomutual on Venmo)

(all times EST)

Friday, March 24

10:45am – Opening Remarks 

11:00am-12:30pm – Gender and Queerness 

  • ‘Dea Undae’: Phenomenological Approaches to the Intersections of Water and Gender in Thetis’ Metamorphic Body in Metamorphoses 11, and Elizabeth Cook’s Achilles – Alexandra Meghji, University College London 
  • Perpetua’s Queer Death – Lilly Haave, Pomona College 
  • Beloved Sons, Hated Daughters: Jephthah, Iphigenia, and Human Sacrifice, a Feminist and Structuralist Critique – Daniel B Sanders, Loyola University Chicago 
  • The Book, The Body, and The Hair of the Imperial Roman Matrona – Hannah Lynch, Harvard University

1:00-2:30pm – Ancient Gynecology 

  • Constructing the Menstruating Body in Ancient Corinth –  Leah Wild, University of Cambridge 
  • I Will Pierce my Womb! Abortion as a Divine Right in Seneca’s Medea – Elisa Markhoff, Villanova University 
  • A Level of Care – Rachael Cahoon, Brandeis University 

4:00-5:30pm – Keynote with Dr. Debby Sneed – Technology and the Limits of the Human Body in Archaic Greece

Saturday, March 25

10:30am-12:00pm – Bodies of Roman Society 

  • Ego vir sterilis ero? – Eugenia Piazza, University of Bologna 
  • Eunuchs – Garrett Fowler, University of Colorado, Boulder 
  • Losing face: Bodily integrity and social status in Thelyphron’s tale – Annabel Crawshaw-Brown, University of St. Andrews 
  • Disability and Character in Cicero’s De Senectute – Kyle West, University of Pennsylvania 

12:30-2:00pm – Rituals of Death and Violence 

  • Rites and Rights – Felix Townley Bakewell, Bryn Mawr College 
  • The Disabled(?) Dead: Non-Normative Bodies in Transition in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia – Emma Traylor, University of Glasgow 
  • Between corpora and cadavera: defining and transforming the body and the self in the Roman funeral – Rafael A. Barroso-Romero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and Max Weber-Kolleg, Universität Erfurt 

3:00-4:30pm – Ovidian Bodies

  • Narcissus – Charlee Thacker, Bryn Mawr College 
  • Medea and Masculinity – Bethany Wisdom, Bryn Mawr College 
  • Ovid – Frederick Kimpton, University of Exeter 
  • Philomela and Procne – Alice Hockstader, Bryn Mawr College 

4:30pm – Concluding Discussion

Spring 2021 Conference