Craven Seminar 2024 ‘Interface Interpretation: exegesis as encounter in Greco-Roman literature’
Classics Faculty, University of Cambridge, 22-24 May 2024
Organisers: Benedek Kruchió (bk390@cam.ac.uk) and Lea Niccolai (ln294@cam.ac.uk)
Playing with the notion of ‘interface’ as the space where two independent other systems meet, the Craven seminar 2024 discusses ancient texts in which different if not incompatible topics are brought together by their examination via the same interpretive lens. The focus is on how ancient hermeneutical practices shaped cultural interactions, fostered theories of value, and organised literary, spiritual, and socio-political priorities accordingly. Papers will explore forms of cross-interpretation of topics ranging from nature and physiology to poetry, law, and history.
Programme:
Day 1 (22 May)
4.00 registration
Panel 1: Beginnings
4.30 – Dawn LaValle Norman (Australian Catholic University) The Science behind birth metaphors in 2nd and 3rd century Christian writers
5.30 – Simon Goldhill (University of Cambridge) Basil’s Hexaemeron: phusis and tradition
6.30 Drink reception and dinner
Day 2 (23 May)
8.40 Coffee
Panel 2: Legacies
9.00 – Tim Whitmarsh (University of Cambridge) Literary Criticism as Heresy
10.00 – Emma Dyson (University of Pennsylvania) Eunapius of Sardis and Neoplatonist Historiography
Break
11.30 – Benedek Kruchió (University of Cambridge), The many faces of Musaeus: epic, novel, and allegory in Hero and Leander
12.30 lunch
Panel 3: Paradigms
1.30 –Monika Amsler (University of Bern) The Craft as an Interface in Iulius Africanus’ Cesti – weaving, writing, and designing knowledge
2.30 – Ineke Sluiter (Leiden University) Constructing the interface: the philological paradigm
3.30 Break
Panel 4: Authority
4.00 – Federico Petrucci (University of Turin) Science, philosophy and authority in Ptolemy
5.00 – Lea Niccolai (University of Cambridge) Philo on animal sounds and god’s silence
Day 3 (24 May)
8.30 coffee
Panel 5: Ordering
9.00 – Peter Struck (University of Pennsylvania) Porphyry on Reason: how an understanding of cultural and racial difference shapes an understanding of cognition
10.00 – Maren Niehoff (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Roman Law in Jewish Bible exegesis: the case of Flavius Josephus
11.00 break
Panel 6: Collisions
11.30 – Oliver Parkes (University of Cambridge), ‘Interfaces’ or ‘Collisions’? Forms of Universal History in the Sibylline Oracles
12.30 – Emma Greensmith (University of Oxford) Nightmarish Encounters: Interpreting Homer and Christ in the Vision of Dorotheus
1.30 lunch
2.00 – roundtable discussion
This will be an in-person event. Please register here: