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Imperial Classics:  Culture, Letters, Learning

Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

A conference organized by Margaret Williamson (Dartmouth College) and Phiroze Vasunia (University of Reading, Network on Ancient and Modern Imperialisms), in collaboration with the Leslie Center for the Humanities.  Co-sponsored by The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, The Classics Department, and The Office of the Provost at Dartmouth.

For more information, contact Meredyth Morley (meredyth.morley@dartmouth.edu )     (603) 646-8172.

• Travel information:   http://www.dartmouth.edu/~maps/directions/
• Dartmouth Campus Map:  http://www.dartmouth.edu/~maps/campus/close-ups/nw.html

Conference Overview:

This conference arises from the work of the Network on Ancient and Modern Imperialisms, initiated in 2005 by a group of scholars from the UK and US with the aim of looking at the appropriation of ancient empires within a number of modern imperial cultures.

‘Imperial Classics: Culture, Letters, Learning’ focuses on the scholarship and cultures of imperial nation-states, as well as on their educational systems. In what ways did classical models inform perceptions of the present, and how did the imperial enterprise in turn influence the understanding of ancient cultures? How far were the images, motifs and conceptual frameworks of ancient empires appropriated in order to legitimize those of the present? How do imaginary representations of antiquity, on the one hand, and of contemporary lands and ethnicities, on the other, interact? A related question concerns the influence and nature of education. The role of classical learning in the formation and perpetuation of elites has been much studied recently. Less well explored as yet is the way in which the élites who appropriated and administered modern empires were influenced by classical precedent and, conversely, the effect the social function of a classical education may have had on the content and framework of the teaching of Classics.

At the core of this project is the desire to understand the historical roots and present impact of imperialism. The conference aims to bring together scholars from a range of backgrounds who are working on imperialism and antiquity, and draws on some of the exciting new work starting up in the field of classical reception.

Program:

Thursday, November 19th

4:15 pm
Location: Filene Auditorium, Moore Hall, Dartmouth College 

Plenary Address I

Chair:  Adrian Randolph, Humanities Center, Dartmouth College

• Homi Bhabha, Harvard University
  "What is a postcolonial classic?"  The First Fannie & Alan Leslie Lecture in the Humanities
•  Respondent: Dan Selden, University of California, Santa Cruz

Public Reception

•  Sponsored by The Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College

5:30 pm 
Location: Filene Foyer, Moore Hall

Friday November 20th

9:15 am
Location: Kreindler Auditorium, Haldeman 041

Welcome and Introduction

• Barry Scherr, Provost Emeritus, Dartmouth College

 

9:30 am – 10:45 am
Location: Kreindler Auditorium, Haldeman 041

Session 1: Heliodorus and Empire

• Chair: Dan Selden, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Jonathan Crewe, Dartmouth College
  "Virtual Empire: Lessons from An Ethiopian Story"
•  Mary Nyquist, University of Toronto
  "Early Modern Indigeneity, Sacrifice, and Roman Civility"

 

10:45 am – 11:15 am

Tea/ coffee

 

11:15 am – 12:30 pm
Location: Kreindler Auditorium, Haldeman 041

Session 2: Epic and Empire

• Chair:  Pramit Chaudhuri, Dartmouth College
• Andrew Laird, University of Warwick
  "The 'Aeneid' from the Aztecs to the Dark Virgin: Empire, Native Tradition and Creole Pride in Villerias' 'Guadalupe' (1724)"
• Nicholas Allen, National University of Ireland, Galway
  “Lastly I think of the slaves: Ireland, Epic and Late Imperial Dissidence”

12:30 pm – 2 pm

Lunch

2:15 pm – 4 pm
Location: Kreindler Auditorium, Haldeman 041

Session 3: Archaeology, Travel and Empire

• Chair: Phiroze Vasunia, University of Reading
• Holger Hoock, University of Liverpool & Library of Congress
  “Learned Officials and Scholarly Officers: The British Imperial State and the Appropriation of Antiquities at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century”
• Richard Hingley, Durham University
  “Re-creating Empire: the Wall of Hadrian and Victorian/ Edwardian imperial discourse”
• Mariam Dossal, University of Mumbai
  “Recording for Rule and Posterity: Travel Writings and Reports of Early Nineteenth Century British Administrator-Explorers”

 

4 pm – 4:30 pm

Tea/ coffee

 

4:30 pm
Location: Kreindler Auditorium, Haldeman 041

Plenary Address II

• Chair: Angela Rosenthal, Art History, Dartmouth College
• Srinivas Aravamudan, Duke University
  “Discoveries of New Worlds, Talking Animals, and Remote Nations”

 

Public Reception 6 pm - 7 pm

Location:  Rauner Special Collections Library, Gallery Room

Viewing of the exhibit "Beasts and Monsters:  Discovering Antiquity in the New World"

 

Saturday November 21st

9:15 am – 10:30 am
Location: Kreindler Auditorium, Haldeman 041

Session 4: Scholarship and Empire

• Chair: Robert Cummings, University of Glasgow
• Matthew Fox, University of Glasgow
  “The Scholar and the Gentleman: Changing Identities and Disciplinarity in the Eighteenth Century”
• Jeanne Morefield, Whitman College
  “Cheating Decline: Comparing Zimmern and Kagan on Thucydides, Empire, and Grand Strategy”

 

10:30 am – 11 am

Tea/ coffee

 

11 am – 12:30 pm
Location: Kreindler Auditorium, Haldeman 041

Session 5: American Classics

• Chair: Edward Miller, Dartmouth College
• John Lee, University of California at Santa Barbara
  “American Xenophons: Classical Texts and Contemporary Culture in the Era of the U.S.-Mexican War”
• Daniel Tompkins, Temple University
  “Democracy and Hegemony: Hand in the Glove, or Square Peg in Round Hole?”
• Nancy Rabinowitz, Hamilton College
  “Anti-Imperialist Tragedy”

 

12:30 pm – 2 pm

Lunch

 

2 pm – 3:30 pm
Location: Kreindler Auditorium, Haldeman 041

Session 6:   African and Caribbean Classics

• Chair: Ayo Coly, Dartmouth College
• Folake Onayemi, University of Ibadan
  “The African/ Yoruba Novels of D.O. Fagonwa”
• Rachel Friedman, Vassar College
  "The Roots of Empire in Derek Walcott's 'Odyssey: A Stage Version' " 
• Emily Greenwood, Yale University
• “Greece, Rome and Cultural Imperialism in the Poetry of Aimé Césaire and Kamau Brathwaite”

 

3:30 pm – 4 pm

Public Reception

Location:  Foyer of Faulkner Recital Hall, Hopkins Center

4 pm - 5 pm
Location: Faulkner Recital Hall

A lecture and piano performance inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s iconic 1912 novel The Auto-biography of an Ex-Colored Man.

• James Tatum, Dartmouth College
  “Ragging the Classics: The Muses of James Weldon Johnson”