On July 21st-22nd, 2024, SASA held its fourth annual virtual conference, Opening the Ancient world. This free, live-streamed conference brings together scholars from around the world to present where they may not otherwise have the chance and support independent researchers worldwide.
Across the two days of live-streaming, with the help of SASA’s partners, 25 individual talks were held with a combined attendance of 24,000 people attending the conference. SASA was able to support a wide range of diversity in this audience with individuals tuning in across the world from Australia to India, France to the United States. This diversity extended through to education level and age with an age range of 13-60+ and education ranging from High School diplomas to PhDs.
The success of this event would not have been possible without the support of SASA’s partners. Each of these organizations; Digital Hammurabi, Voices of Ancient Egypt, World History Encyclopedia, World of Antiquity, Per-Hay Studio, History in 5 minutes, History with Kayleigh, and New Classicists have been crucial in their help advertising and streaming the conference. And, with the generous grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, SASA was able to reach a more diverse audience with the inclusion of live interpretation during the conference in both Spanish and Arabic.
This year's theme was “Representations of the Past in Ancient and Modern Times,” chosen to expand upon the growing idea of ‘the reception of the ancient world’. A discipline with its roots in the 1980s, ‘Reception Theory,’ which refers to the relationship between the ancient and modern and the extent to which the more modern ideas of the ancient are influenced by their own social constructs and content rather than the material from the ancient world itself. This conference aims to broaden the idea of reception, taking a step back from the Western and Colonial interpretations and towards a more universal understanding, achieving this with an interdisciplinary exploration of how different societies across time have interacted with their historical roots.
The 25 presenters SASA welcomed this year came from a variety of both scholarly adjacent and more separate backgrounds, all devoting a portion of their personal time to pursuing scholarship. The virtual nature of the conference allowed SASA to host speakers from across the world, with this year's conference supporting presenters from the United States, Canada, Sudan, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Jordan, Iran, India, and New Zealand.
The conference was divided into 5 sessions, each providing insights on representations of the past through different periods of ancient and modern times and different cultures, including but not limited to Ancient Mayans, Indians, Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Iranians, and Sudanese persons. The five sections were Modern Projects on the Past, Mythology and Religion Over Time, Kinship Narratives, Art and Aesthetics, and Recontextualizing Ancient Poetry.
The Keynote Speakers:
The three keynote speakers, Dr. Martha Tepepa Covarrubias, Dr. Laura Castro Royo and Dr. Marian Feldman, discussed topics in their presentations ranging from the changing portrayal of Achaemenid Culture in modern media, the shift in representations of the Maya and the reception of Akkadian period royal monuments in Mesopotamia.
Dr. Martha Tepepa Covarrubias: a current professor at Western Connecticut State University who holds an MA in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University (New York), as well as a PhD in Urban Environmental Studies from El Colegio de México (Mexico City).
Spoke on: Shifting Representations of the Maya
Dr. Laura Castro Royo: an Art Historian with an MA in Medieval Studies from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a PhD from the School of Art History and School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews (Scotland). She is also the Director of the online public project ‘Las Plumas de Simurgh (Mesopotamia and Iran)’.
Spoke on: Under the Shadow of the Huma: Representations of the Achaemenid Culture in Modern Media
Prof. Marian Feldman: Currently a professor at Johns Hopkins University who received a PhD in Art History at Harvard University in Near Eastern Art. Additionally, she holds the W.A. Collins Vickers Chair in Archaeology, a position she has held since 2018.
Spoke on: The Display and Reception of Akkadian Period (c. 2350-2150 BCE) Royal Monuments in Later Mesopotamian History
Partners:
SASA were honored to have been supported this year by our partners who have made this conference possible.
SASA would like to thank everyone who tuned in to this year's virtual conference and invites you to catch up on any sessions you have missed via the 2024 Virtual conference playlist, to join us at next year's conference in the summer of 2025 and to check out our many free public events across the year.
Want to find out more?
2024 Conference Report: 2024 Opening the Ancient World Conference Report
Watch recordings of any of the sessions from the Virtual Conference: 2024 Virtual Conference
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