Classical (con)texts
Coordinator
Research description
The research-group Classical (con)texts focuses on two themes:
- The rhetoric and ideology of classical texts (interpreted with narratological, linguistic, intertextual, and metapoetical theories), and
- the relation between classical texts and their (shifting) cultural contexts (interpreted with reception theory, New Historicism, Ecocriticism etc.).
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), A. Cooley (Warwick), G. Rosati (SNS Pisa), T. Fuhrer (München).
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. This is the follow-up of the international research labs that we ran on Friday afternoons, discussing 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 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 organised a succesful orkhop on ‘Conversation and Dialogue in Latin’ at the 21st International Colloqium on Latin Linguistics in Santiago de Compostela, May 2021.
Berenice Verhelst is one of the coordinators of the international, digital humanities project DICES project on epic speeches from Homer to Late Antiquity.
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.
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. L. Van Gils is editor of Lampas, the Dutch periodical for school teachers.
Members
- Dr. M.P. de Bakker
- Dr. G. H. van den Berg (postdoc)
- Dr. M. Breunesse (postdoc)
- C. Fossi MA (PhD)
- Dr. P.S. Gerbrandy
- Dr. L. van Gils
- Dr. M.A.J. Heerink
- Prof J.W. van Henten (professor emeritus)
- B. Hoetjes MA (PhD)
- Dr. L. Huitink
- Prof I.J.F. de Jong (professor emeritus)
- Prof C.H.M. Kroon
- I. F. Laseur (PhD)
- Dr. Arjan Nijk
- R. Selles MA (PhD)
- Dr. Berenice Verhelst
- Koen Vacano (PhD)
External Members:
- dr. S. Adema (Leiden)
- dr. R. Allan (VU)
- dr. Ch. Chrysanthou (Nicosia)
- prof. dr. E. von Contzen (Freiburg)
- prof. dr. R. Kirstein (Tübingen)
- dr. E. van Opstall (VU)
- prof. dr. K. de Temmerman (Gent)
- Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Munich)
- dr. C. Stocks (UvA, AHM)
- prof. dr. W. Verbaal (Gent)
- dr. N. Vos (VU)