Writing from the Margins: New Approaches to Ancient Authorship

This conference contests traditional views of ancient authors as elite individuals working independently to compose texts for elite audiences. Instead, we approach authorship as a collaborative, shifting, and multilayered enterprise that, we feel, better fits the social realities of the ancient world. Key questions for the conference include:  1) how were slaves, freedmen/freedwomen, and non-citizens involved in the creation of ancient texts and 2) how can we better appreciate texts’ dissemination and preservation by anonymous or uncredited intermediaries such as scribes, pedagogues, graffitists, and performers in the theatre? Building on recent contestation of rigid identity categories, we see ‘status’ itself (in terms of class, race, ethnicity, (dis)ability, citizenship) as fluid and moveable, with individuals moving between enslaved/free, elite/non-elite, citizen/foreigner, disabled/abled during their lifetime or, in some cases, depending on the eye of the beholder. 

Although authorship has long been a contested category in literary and cultural theory, e.g. in the work of Barthes and Foucault, it has not received adequate treatment as a socio-cultural phenomenon in the ancient world. gWe are interested chiefly in the historical conditions of textual production, and how acknowledging the involvement of marginal authors/authorship can affect our interpretation of extant texts. Given the challenges of ancient evidence, where marginal voices are likely to be elided or downplayed, we are particularly keen to explore new methods and theoretical frameworks for uncovering non-elite authorship and appreciating its significance.

This event is being organised by Dr Erica Bexley, Dr Katherine McDonald and Dr Lucy Jackson.

Please register for the conference here

Conference Programme

Wednesday 13th of May 

2:00-2:30: Introduction 

2:30-3:30: Gender [Chair: Caroline Barron] 

Kristina Milnor, "Gender, Authority, and the Law in a Private Contract from Pompeii"  

Magdalena Streicher, “A Woman, a Will, and the Augustales: Practice, Participation and Honour” 

3:30-4:00: tea and coffee 

4:00-5:30: Agency and Collaboration [Chair: Chiara Palladino] 

Marie Christians, “What Could Be Said about the Despotai of Greek Papyrus Adespota” 

Naomi Scott, “Writing in the margins of Julius Pollux’s Onomasticon: scribal annotation as cross-temporal collaboration” 

Ben Willstead, “Poetic Agency: from Speaking Objects to Aesop” 

5:45: drinks reception 

7:00: dinner 

Thursday 14th of May 

9:30-10:30: Comedy [Chair: Erica Bexley] 

Robin Kreutel, "Make comedy pure again - Terence’s programmatics of distinction and the reinvention of Roman comedy" 

Tom Baarda, “servus litteratus: Branding and Literary Expertise in Plautus” 

10:30-11:00: tea and coffee 

11:00-12:30: Inscriptions [Chair: Katherine McDonald] 

Dylan Bovet, “Crossing the Line: Social Mobility, Poetic Self-Representation, and the “Author” in Latin Verse Epitaphs” 

Abigail Graham “Epitaphs and Authorship: Reading Status in Context”  

Katherine Backler, “How should we think about—and identify?—the authors of inscribed texts?” 

12:30-1:30: Lunch 

1:30-3:00: Later Antiquity [Chair: Jacob Lollar] 

Graham Barrett, “Literature in the Strawberry Patch: Peasants and Pizarras in Late Antique Iberia”  

Stephanie Frampton, “Authorship without Authors: Grammatical Intermediaries and the Making of “Author” 

Michaela Brembilla “Obstetricalis ratio. Recognizing and tracing midwives in the Gynaecia’s manuscript tradition.” 

3:00-3:30: tea and coffee 

3:30-5:00: At the Margins of Roman Poetry [Chair: Jennifer Ingleheart] 

Roberto di Tuccio, “What are you reading now? Marginality as Uncredited Author in Imperial Satire and Epigram” 

Lucy Smith, “Beyond the mask of Roman elegy’s singular poet-persona: metapoetic expressions of collaborative and exploitative literary production in Tibullus’ Elegies.” 

Joe Watson, “Queer Eye for the Dirae” 

6:30: dinner 

Friday 15th of May 

9:30-10:30: Dictation [Chair: Roy Gibson] 

Thomas Kelly “Can we see hints of dictation in the language of Cicero’s letters?” 

Christopher Londa, “Last Words: Deathbeds and Dictation in Ancient Roman Authorship” 

10:30-11: tea and coffee 

11:00-12:00: Slaves and Scribes [Chair: Peter Heslin] 

Jason Porter “The Role of Slaves in the Composition of Ancient Oratory.” 

Mateu Portells Watson “Re-reading biographies: enslaved and freed people in Greek literary production” 

 12:30: Closing remarks