Opening the Ancient World 2024 - Representations of the Past in Ancient and Modern Times

Opening the Ancient World

Theme: “Representations of the Past in Ancient and Modern Times”

Sunday, July 21st & Monday, July 22nd, 2024

The theme of the conference is “Representations of the Past in Ancient and Modern Times.” While the issues of reception, representation, and use of the past in modern times have been hot topics in recent decades, this has been the case mainly in connection with Western colonialism and contemporary mass media representations. This narrow focus in thinking about representations of pasts misses the universality of this cultural exercise.

“Reception Studies” and “Reception Theory,” disciplines initiated in the 1980s, have been applied over the last 30 years in regard to the reception and incorporation of the ancient world by modern and contemporary societies. However, all past societies had conceptions of their pasts, and sometimes investigated them, doing “archaeology within archaeology” and “history within history.” For example, in the 13th century BCE Prince Khaemwese initiated a survey of older ancient Egyptian monuments and a restoration program to repair and clean numerous pyramids, tombs, chapels, and temples. Similarly, in the modern era, the Renaissance painter Raffaello Sanzio was commissioned by the Pope to map and preserve ancient monuments of Rome, making Raffaello the first superintendent of cultural heritage in history.

Some studies deal with how past societies perceived and represented their pasts, but are often focused on the tradition of ancient historians and historiography both in the ancient and modern world. But what knowledge did ancient peoples have of their own deep pasts? To this end, the concept of historicity, as applied in anthropology, may help to have an emic approach to this topic. As Charles Stewart states, historicity refers to “cultural perceptions of the past, … [calling] attention to the techniques such as rituals that people use to learn about the past, the principles that guide them, and the performances and genres in which information about the past can be presented” (2016, 79).

This interdisciplinary conference examines exploration, representation, and reception of pasts in the broadest cross-cultural, global, and atemporal world context. This conference employs the framework of interdisciplinary “Ancient Studies,” the study of the deep past of all societies, exploring the reception and representation of the past in present and ancient societies. Removing the privileging of our contemporary temporal position by intertwining current and past explorations of pasts treats this issue as a human cultural construction in all societies.

Where to watch (make sure to follow & subscribe!):

This is a FREE public conference that will be livestreamed on SASA website (Virtual Conference)

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