List of Conference Presenters

Coming Soon.

Update on Submissions (2)

UPDATED 2.6.2010

Individual announcements will go out by email on Monday 8 February to all participants who submitted proposals.

Thanks to everyone who has submitted proposals for the upcoming conference.  The submission period will close today at 5 pm CST (with a grace period lasting until midnight). All the reviewers and organizers have been highly impressed by the 50+ submissions we have received thus far.  The decision to extend only 10-12 invitations to Austin is sure to be a challenging one.

We look forward to posting decisions–as well as a preliminary conference line-up–both here on this blog and on the Memoria project homepage by the end of the second week of February.

Keynote Address: T. P. Wiseman

Professor T.P. Wiseman of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter will be coming to Austin, Texas, to give the keynote address at the Memoria Romana conference.

We are pleased to announce Prof. Wiseman’s public lecture is entitled, “Roman Memory: Theory and Practice,” and is scheduled for 4 pm on the 16th of April, 2010.

Location: Mezes Hall (1.306) at the University of Texas at Austin.

Deadline for Abstract Submissions Nears

Happy 2010, everyone!

The call for papers for the graduate student and junior faculty conference is about to close on the 20th of January.  Thanks to everyone — across two continents — who has submitted an abstract for review so far.  We look forward to reading them and posting the list of accepted presenters here and on the Memoria website at the University of Texas at Austin by the start of February.

For those of you still interested in submitting, do make sure you send your abstract this week.  The details for submission are on-line.

Best of luck.

Modern Memory: Thomas Pynchon

She was meant to remember.  She faced that possibility….  She tested it, shivering: I am meant to remember.

The character Oedipa Maas in The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon, 1999).

To Members of the CAA, SBL, AIA, and APA

To members of the College Art Association, the Society of Biblical Literature, the Archaeological Institute of America and the American Philological Association, be sure to check out the webpages of your respective organizations for the cross-posting of the Call for Papers (Conference) and the Announcement of Grants and Stipends.

These listings should be posted soon.  Be sure to circulate them to your colleagues in the field.  We look forward to receiving your proposals and submissions!

Modern Memory: Jorge Luis Borges

… memory, which makes each person both spectator and actor.

Afterword, The Book of Sand (1975) by Jorge Luis Borges

Modern Memory: Michel de Montaigne

Nature has very conveniently cast the action of our sight outwards.  We are swept on downstream, but to struggle back towards our self against the current is a painful movement; thus does the sea, when driven against itself, swirl back in confusion.  Everyone says: ‘Look at the motions of the heavens, look at society, at this man’s quarrel, that man’s pulse, this other man’s will and testament.  [The oracle at Delphi, however, says:] ‘Look back into your self; get to know your self; hold on to your self.’  Can you not see that this world of ours keeps its gaze bent ever inwards and its eyes ever open to contemplate itself?

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), On Vanity

Modern Memory: Gabriel García Márquez

With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan.  He went to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen, cassava, caladium, banana.  Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use.  Then he was more explicit.  The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary proof of the way in which the inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against the loss of memory: This is the cow.  She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk. Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (1970)

Call for Conference Papers

Research on memory has received increasing attention in both neurobiology and the humanities.

This conference, financed by the Max Planck Research Award to Prof. Karl Galinsky, will be held at the University of Texas at Austin, April 16-18, 2010.  It aims to provide graduate students and junior faculty with an opportunity to examine the role of memory in diverse areas of Roman civilization and to test current methodologies.  Prof. T. P. Wiseman of the University of Exeter will be the keynote speaker.

Papers are invited on subjects such as Roman historiography, social history, art, architecture and monuments, literature, religion, and on theoretical issues relating to Gedächtnisgeschichte. Abstracts of no more than 300 words (for a 20-minute presentation) should be submitted by January 20, 2010, to Dr. Douglas Boin (drboin [at] mail.utexas.edu).  Please include the words ‘Memoria Abstracts‘ in the subject header.

Earlier applications are encouraged and inquiries can be directed to galinsky [at] mail.utexas.edu.

All participants will receive free lodging and a travel subsidy.