Announcements
Inaugural Meeting of the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Call for Papers

June 28, 2009
Pontifical Biblical Institute
Rome, Italy

What's "Religious" about Ancient Mediterranean Religions?

At the inaugural meeting of the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions, we plan to begin our discussions by considering the ways in which the conceptual category "religion" is applicable to the study of ancient cultures. Sacrifice, prayer, pilgrimage, private and public devotion, beliefs about gods and goddesses-all of these practices and ideas seem to fall safely enough within the category of "religion." A question worth thinking about, however, is whether the boundaries of this modern category-and indeed the category itself-match up with any patterns of practice or belief held by the people we hope to understand. In other words, what did it mean to be "religious" in the ancient world? Perhaps behaviors that we might now call "religious" are better understood as falling within the realm of political acts, or as practices that delineate certain tribal or familial identities. Matching up ancient and modern ideas about this cluster of ideas and practices promises to reveal significant mismatches in our conceptual lexica where religion ancient and modern is concerned. We hope that it will also give rise to useful reflections about this inter-disciplinary project that we have initiated: what different methodological presuppositions do students of ancient Mediterranean cultures bring to the study of religious phenomena and what do we stand to learn from each other? Proposals addressing this topic and formed with reference to Mediterranean societies from the Bronze Age up through the Late Antique period (3rd millennium BCE to the 7th century CE) are welcome.

Abstracts of 500 words should be sent to Barbette Spaeth (bsspae@wm.edu) by September 1, 2008; the conference slate will be decided by September 30.

Please provide abstracts within the email itself, or as attachments in MS Word format (.doc or .docx). Participants should aim for papers of approximately 30 minutes in length. While the conference will be conducted chiefly in English, the committee will also consider papers (and abstracts) presented in Italian.

Further information about the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions can be found at http://socamr.wikispaces.com/

Call for Papers (Collection)

Resurrecting the “First Five Hundred”:
The Church Fathers in Early Modern England

In his “Challenge Sermon” delivered at St. Paul’s Cross on November 26, 1559, Bishop John Jewel argued that the Church Fathers were the true architects of the Christian religion and that the English people would no longer be subjected to the sort of medieval tampering that had led the one true Church astray. “The first five hundred years of the church,” he would argue, “are worth more than the whole thousand that followed afterward.” For this collection, we are seeking essays that address the topic of the Church Fathers in early modern English culture. Topics addressed may include (but will not be limited to) the rhetorical, political, ethical, and material uses of the Church Fathers and the influence of the Fathers on education, rhetoric, science, philosophy, philology, the stage, book production, devotional and polemical writing, women and writing, the body, colonialist discourse, and the rise of capitalism.

Please address queries to the collection’s editors, Mitchell Harris (mharris@gustavus.edu) and Steven Matthews (smatthew@d.umn.edu). Essay proposals should be between 500 and 800 words. Completed essays should be between 4,000 and 9,000 words in text, approximately 16-36 double-spaced pages, and should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003). Please use endnotes. Proposals and completed essays should be sent electronically as a Microsoft Word document or PDF file.

A Sea of Languages: 
Rethinking the History of Western Translation


Translation in the multi-lingual and multi-cultural world of the ancient
Mediterranean was a manifest necessity, and yet there have been very few
studies on the role of translation and translators in this rich linguistic
environment.  Even when authors such as Cicero and St. Jerome are discussed
they are too often seen primarily as archaic precursors of modern Western
translation theory and divorced from their cultural context. With the
current upsurge of interest in translation and the explosive growth of the
field of translation studies, we feel that this is an opportune time for
scholars of the ancient Mediterranean to contribute to the present debate by
complicating the too-often monolithic representation of ancient translation
practices and to examine translation in this region as a field worthy of
investigation in its own right, as a multifaceted historically and
culturally grounded activity.

We invite contributions to a proposed volume on translation and translators
in the ancient Mediterranean which will place both in their historical,
linguistic, literary, and cultural contexts. We seek papers from all regions
and all time periods up to the 5th century CE. Questions we would like
potential contributors to consider are: how did ancient translators
function? Under what constraints did they operate? How did literary
translators position themselves vis-à-vis other forms of translation? What
role did official translation play? Can we recover ancient theories of
translation?

We seek particularly seek papers that touch on the following topics, though
papers on all subjects are welcome:

-    ancient theories of translation
-    translation and cultural appropriation
-    official translations and translators
-    interpreting and oral translation
-    translation as literary transformation
-    the physical and temporal environment of translation
-    translator loyalties and translators as social agents
-    religious translation and its constraints
-    pseudo-translations

Abstracts of 500 words should be submitted to either Siobhan McElduff
(mcelduff@gmail.com) or Enrica Sciarrino (enrica.sciarrino@canterbury.ac.nz)
by September 15, 2008.  Notification of acceptance will be sent out by
October 15, 2008. Please provide abstracts within the email itself or as
attachments in MS Word.

3rd International Conference
“Research on the Church of the East in China and Central Asia”

 

We are pleased to announce that the 3rd International Conference “Research on the Church of the East in China and Central Asia” will be held at the Conference Center St. Virgil in Salzburg, (Austria/Europe), June 4-9, 2009.

 

General Program

June 4, 2009: Opening Session at 7.00pm

June 5-8, 2009: Conference sessions

June 9, 2009: Departure after breakfast

There will be an organised excursion and an evening concert.

 

Papers

We welcome papers from disciplines such as Philology, Archaeology, Sinology, Syrology, History, Theology/Religious Studies, Cultural and Asian Studies to explore and discuss various aspects of the Church of the East (“Nestorian” or East Syriac Christianity) in China and Central Asia. A small number of papers on East Syriac Christianity in India or other areas in Asia may also be accepted.  Papers should be original, concise and to the point. They should take 20 minutes to deliver and be presented in English.

 

 

Proceedings

Proceedings will be published. Participants will be informed about the publication guidelines during the conference.

Papers presented at the 1st conference (2003) were published in: Jingjiao: The Church of the East in China and Central Asia. Ed. by Roman Malek in connection with Peter Hofrichter. (Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica ,2006) ISBN 3-8050-0534-2.

The publication of the 2nd conference papers (2006) is forthcoming in fall 2008.

 

Contact

For further information, please contact: salzburg3.conf@sbg.ac.at

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dietmar W. Winkler

Dr. Li Tang (Conference Management)

 

Fachbereich Bibelwissenschaft und Kirchengeschichte

Universität Salzburg

Universitätsplatz 1

A-5020 Salzburg

Austria

Tel. +43 662 842521 142

Fax: +43 662 842521 143

TRADITIO: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought, and Religion, is published annually by Fordham University. The Board of Editors was recently reconstituted and comprises: Martin Chase (English, Associate Managing Editor), Joseph T. Lienhard (Theology, Managing Editor), Wolfgang Mueller (History), and Giorgio Pini (Philosophy), all at Fordham University; Susan Boynton (Music), and Carmela Vircillo Franklin (Classics), both at Columbia University; and William E. Klingshirn (Greek and Latin), at the Catholic University of America.

TRADITIO publishes monographic essays, critical editions of texts, and research tools in Classics, Early Christianity, Late Antiquity, and Medieval and Byzantine Studies. Disciplinary approaches include philology, history, theology, philosophy, literature, and art history. The managing editor, or any of the editors, will gladly receive manuscripts for review, or inquiries about submitting articles. For further details, see www.fordham.edu/traditio.

TRINITY EVANGELICAL DIVINITY SCHOOL, a graduate educational institution affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America, invites applications and nominations for a faculty position in Patristics and Early Christian History, to begin by the fall of 2009. The successful candidate will possess a Ph.D. in church history or a related discipline, a record of rigorous academic scholarship, demonstrated effectiveness in the classroom, and an enthusiastic commitment to training future pastors and scholars for the global Church. Applicants should have a vibrant faith in Jesus Christ, an active involvement in the local church, and a desire to serve with an interdenominational, evangelical faculty and staff. Faculty members must concur with the school's doctrinal statement. The successful applicant must be eligible for faculty rank of either assistant or associate professor. Please mail letters of interest, three academic references, and a curriculum vitae to Scott Manetsch, Chairman of the Department of Church History; Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; 2065 Half Day Road; Deerfield, IL 60015. Application will be received until the position if filled.

Sophia Institute

NAPS Colleagues may wish to note the Foundation of the ‘Sophia Institute’ in New York, as part of a new endowment to recast Early Church History at Union Theological Seminary, as an endowed Chair in Late Antique and Byzantine Christian History. John McGuckin has launched the Sophia Institute to focus on the history, theology, and wider culture of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It is currently gathering endowment so as to extend its range and scope; but its intellectual mission is already inaugurated. It aspires to be a significant Advanced Research Institute for the years ahead with an academic mission of publications related to Eastern Christian thought, an annual conference, and a Philanthropic program focused on Eastern Europe. Further details may be found on the attached flyer, or from John McGuckin (jam401@columbia.edu).

Sophia Institute flyer (pdf)

Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy

I'm delighted to announce a new research project, "Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy" under the overall leadership of Professor John Fitzgerald of the University of Miami (john.fitzgerald@miami.edu) and Fika J. van Rensburg of North-West University (Fika.JanseVanRensburg@nwu.ac.za). We are planning to pursue this project in sessions held at both NAPS and the SBL Annual Meeting. Although the project itself is still at a very preliminary planning stage, we conceive the project as an international, interdisciplinary endeavor involving ancient historians, classicists, New Testament scholars, church historians, patristic experts, scholars of Late Antiquity, as well as scholars of the different relevant aspects of present day societies. The main research problem is to delineate the relationship between Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy, demonstrating both similarities and differences in attitudes, approaches to problems, and attempted solutions.

To this end the project has four sub-projects:

* The first sub-project involves a study of the major aspects of the economy in the ancient world, especially the economies of Classical Greece, the Hellenistic world, and the Roman Empire. This is a vast field of study that will involve consideration of numerous issues and questions.

* The second sub-project examines first century Early Christianity both in relationship to the ancient economy and in regard to its own economic aspects. We plan to proceed primarily in chronological fashion, beginning with Jesus in the gospels and then the other writings of the New Testament. Given the international and interdisciplinary scope of the project, however, studies will be both synchronic and diachronic, with some contributions focused on specific texts, authors, and events, and others being more comprehensive (and thematic) in nature.

* The third sub-project examines Early Christianity of the second to the fifth centuries, both in relationship to the ancient economy and in regard to its own economic aspects, proceeding century by century to the time of Justinian. Given the international and interdisciplinary scope of the project, however, studies will be both synchronic and diachronic, with some contributions focused on specific texts, authors, and events, and others being more comprehensive in nature.

* The fourth sub-project: The first three sub-projects lay a partial foundation for the fourth one: "Present day Christianity and the Present day Economy: Implications for South Africa and its Development." This fourth sub-project will be done by those who concentrate their research on the present day world, and we view this fourth sub-project as an endeavor that should be independent of, yet informed by, the results of the first three sub-projects. At the same time, we believe that the results of our research project, though focused on early Christianity, will have important implications for present day countries, specifically for South Africa and its economic development: it will contribute to establishing the Biblical principles and guidelines for the economy of a country, e.g., South Africa.

The steering committee of the project plans to submit the application to register as a program unit with the SBL later this year. We are now taking steps to coordinate a session at our NAPS conference in 2008 in Chicago on the third sub-project outlined above: early Christianity of the second to the fifth centuries, both in relationship to the ancient economy and in regard to its own economic aspects. If you are interested in getting involved in this project, and especially if you are interested in giving a paper at the upcoming NAPS conference, please send an e-mail to Charles Bobertz at cbobertz@csbsju.edu.

Charles Bobertz, Ph.D.
St. John's University and School of Theology

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ANCIENT NOVEL
(21-26 July 2008)

It is a pleasure to announce the International Conference on the Ancient Novel - ICAN IV, which will be held in Lisbon from 21 to 26 July 2008. Conference details are available in the PDF linked below. The list of the members of the International Advisory Committee is also included below. Further questions or comments about the conference may be addressed to Marília P. Futre Pinheiro (Chair of the Organizing Committee) at any of the following addresses:

Prof. Dr. Marília P. Futre Pinheiro
Universidade de Lisboa
Faculdade de Letras - Departamento de Estudos Clássicos Alameda da Universidade
1600-214 Lisboa - Portugal
email: info@ican2008.ul.pt
Webpage: www.mfutrepinheiro.pt.vu

Announcement (.pdf)

Advisory Committee (.pdf)

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

The Library of Early Christianity, founded by a challenge grant of the NEH and with the support of many members of the NAPS, solicits new texts/translations of patristic works of all genres and languages. We intend to publish documentary and literary works of early Christianity in affordable, up-to-date, bi-lingual editions accompanied by historical introductions and some critical and explanatory notes. We are especially interested in works that are not easily available elsewhere. For a copy of the editorial guidelines and for any other information, please contact: Dr. J. Petruccione, Editorial Director, the LEC, The Dept. of Greek and Latin, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., 20064. Tel.: 202-319-5216; e-mail: Petruccione@cua.edu.