For best experience please turn on javascript and use a modern browser!
You are using a browser that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Please upgrade your browser. The site may not present itself correctly if you continue browsing.

Classical (con)texts

Coordinator

Dr. M.A.J. (Mark) Heerink

Faculty of Humanities

Capaciteitsgroep Griekse en Latijnse talen en culturen

Research description

The research-group Classical (con)texts focuses on two themes:

  1. The rhetoric and ideology of classical texts (interpreted with narratological, linguistic, intertextual, and metapoetical theories), and
  2. the relation between classical texts and their (shifting) cultural contexts (interpreted with reception theory and New Historicism).

Members of the research group work together closely with colleagues from the VU within ACASA.

Activities

We organize twice each year an international research lecture in the context of our ‘Amsterdam Classics seminar’. Previous speakers include I. Nilsson (Uppsala), B. Fowler (Bristol), R. Webb (Lille), and A. Cooley (Warwick).

We run a monthly Style Seminars on Thursday afternoons to engage in discussions about the concept of style. Through these seminars, our aim is to eventually develop a theoretical framework for understanding style.

We run an international research seminar on Friday afternoons, which discuss research projects and specialisms of Amsterdam classicists: e.g. immersion or conversation analysis.

A considerable number of our research group actively participate in the national research school OIKOS, esp. the research groups ‘The Language of Literature’, ‘Classical Receptions and Traditions’, and the platform ‘Learning and Instruction’.

A considerable number of our research group actively participate in the OIKOS gravitation grant ‘Anchoring Innovation’ (AI). Anchoring is a label for the many different ways in which people connect the new to the old, the traditional, the already known. What is called or considered ‘old’ or ‘new’ is not always a matter of objective diagnosis: it is a judgment established through discourse and societal negotiation. Anchoring innovation is about the way in which people in antiquity coped with ‘newness’, and about the question under what conditions new things became ‘anchored’, and thus successfully implemented - or not. The project involves numerous different Humanities disciplines: linguistics, literary studies, cultural studies, history (including the history of technology, history of religion, socio-economic history, political and intellectual history), archaeology (material culture), and philosophy. C. Kroon is leader of the AI domain ‘Discourse & Rhetoric’; I. de Jong is one of the two leaders of the AI domain ‘Literature and Art’; L. Huitink is AI fellow, M. Heerink supervises an AI PhD project conducted by Koen Vacano (VU) on classical epic and modern epic movies, I. de Jong the AI PhD project of Caterina Fossi (UvA) on Platonic myth as an anchoring device.

R. Risselada and L. Huitink participate in ‘Conversation in Antiquity. Analysis of Verbal Interaction in Ancient Greek and Latin’, a project of the Universidad Autonóma de Madrid, which is led by dr. Rodrigo Verano Liaño. This research group will organise a  Workhop on ‘Conversation and Dialogue in Latin’ at the 21st International Colloqium on Latin Linguistics in Santiago de Compostela, May 2021.

Apart from these structural activities, we regularly organise conferences and workshops, e.g. ‘Workshop Communicative Anchoring’ as part of the International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics’ (17-23 June 2019 Las Palmas); ‘Innovating objects? Reading spolia in Greek and Latin literature’ (digital 22 January 2021); ‘Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense on the Maccabean Books’ (digital 1-3 February 2021).

M. Heerink, I. de Jong and C. Kroon are editors of the series ‘The Language of Classical Literature’, Brill Leiden, I. de Jong (with E. Moormann) of the AI series Euhormos, Brill Leiden.

Research output (selection)

  • M. de Bakker - ‘A Narratological Comparison of Herodotus and Diodorus on Thermopylae’, in L. van Gils, L., I. J.F. de Jong, C.H.M. Kroon (eds), Textual Strategies in Ancient War Narrative: Thermopylae, Cannae and beyond, Leiden 2019, 54-90
  • M. Breunesse - ‘Cicero vs. Mark Antony: Identity construction and ingroup/outgroup formation in Philippics One and Three’, in L. van Gils, C. Kroon, & R. Risselada (eds.), Lemmata Linguistica Latina, Volume 2: Clause and Discourse, Berlin/Boston 2020, 448-463
  • P. Gerbrandy - ‘Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria as a literary work’,  Hermes 148, 2020, 38-52
  • L. van Gils - ‘Livy's Use of Spatial References in the Cannae Episode: from Structure to Strategy’, in L. van Gils,  I. J.F. de Jong, C.H.M. Kroon (eds), Textual Strategies in Ancient War Narrative: Thermopylae, Cannae and beyond, Leiden 2019, 253-272
  • M. Heerink - ‘Replaying Dido: Elegy and the Poetics of Inversion in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica’, in N. Coffee, C. Forstall, L. Galli Millic & D. Nelis (eds.), Intertextuality in Flavian Epic Poetry: Contemporary Approaches, Berlin 2020, 187-203.
  • J.W. van Henten - I. Saloul, I. & J.W. van Henten, (eds.), Martyrdom: Canonisation, Contestation and Afterlives, Amsterdam 2020
  • L. Huitink - J. Grethlein, L. Huitink, and Aldo Tagliabue, Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece: Under the Spell of Stories, Oxford 2020
  • I. de Jong - ‘Metalepsis and the Apostrophe of Heroes in Pindar’, in S. Matzner, G. Trimble (eds.), Metalepsis; Ancient Texts, New Perspectives, Oxford 2020, 79-97
  • C. Kroon - C.H.M. Kroon, L.W. van Gils, & R. Risselada (eds.), Lemmata Linguistica Latina. - Volume 2: Clause and Discourse, Berlin/Boston 2020
  • D. Rijser - Een telkens nieuwe Oudheid. Of: Hoe Tiberius in New Jersey belandde, Amsterdam AUP 2016
  • R. Risselada - C.H.M. Kroon, L.W. van Gils, & R. Risselada (eds.), Lemmata Linguistica Latina. - Volume 2: Clause and Discourse, Berlin/Boston 2020

Societal impact

Virtually all members of the group perform acts of valorization such as writing in Dutch daily papers and periodicals, writing schoolbooks, offering ‘nascholing’ for teachers, or giving public lectures for a larger audience. M. Heerink and R. Risselada (editor) are members of the board of Lampas, the Dutch periodical for school teachers.

Members

External Members:

  • dr. S. Adema (UvA)
  • dr. R. Allan (VU)
  • prof. dr. E. von Contzen (Freiburg)
  • prof. dr. R. Kirstein (Tübingen)
  • prof. dr. K. de Temmerman (Gent)
  • dr. E. van Opstall (VU)
  • prof. dr. W. Verbaal (Gent)
  • dr. N. Vos (VU)
  • Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Munich)
  • dr. Ch. Chrysanthou (Heidelberg)
  • groupe Aspect en Grec (Paris)