Symposium: Self and Space: Household Identity and Domestic Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East

A Graduate Student Symposium

April 12, 2014, 

Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall Street) Room 208

 

 

 

Speaker: Susan Ackerman, Dartmouth College

Panelists:

Kerry Sonia, Brown University

Andrew Johnston, Yale University

Nancy Highcock, New York University

 

 

Speaker: Josef Wegner, University of Pennsylvania

Panelists:

Steven Edwards, University of Toronto

Stephen Davis, Yale University

Natalie Susmann, Boston University

 

 

Speaker: Andrew Wilburn, Oberlin College

Panelists:

Gina Konstantopoulos, University of Michigan

Milette Gaifman, Yale University

Carissa Nicholson, University of Florida

 

 

Speaker: Caitlín Barrett, Cornell University

Panelists:

Julia Troche, Brown University

Oswaldo Chinchilla, Yale University

Miriam Müller, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

 

 

 

Graduate students in the Departments of History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University announce a one-day student-led scholars’ symposium, Self and Space: Household Identity and Domestic Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The goals of this symposium are to facilitate graduate student interaction and discussion with scholars and faculty in a semi-formal environment, and to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogue regarding identity, religion, and materiality at the household level. In an effort to create a more interactive format and to foster a dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, this symposium will entail a series of modules, each consisting of an invited scholar’s talk overviewing the state of research on a particular theme or topic and a complementary panel discussion. Each panelist will provide a brief summary of the specific relationship of the introduced theme to his/her field and individual research and engage in discussion with other panelists and audience members. An interactive format will maximize audience participation in the interest of encouraging the exchange of ideas. Each panel will consist of both faculty and graduate students, with a graduate student serving as panel chair.

 

Themes to be addressed include religious syncretism and the interaction of religions in household contexts across geographic, cultural, and temporal boundaries; the performative aspects of domestic cult and the associated material culture; household identity as it relates to personal piety; methodological approaches to understanding household identity and domestic cult in various disciplines; settlement archaeology and domestic architecture; magic and medicine; and the textual and epigraphic record of religious identity and performativity in domestic contexts.

 

This symposium is funded in part by the Yale Initiative for the Study of Antiquity and the Premodern World and the Yale Department of History.