UPCOMING CONFERENCES

IPS CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE MEETING OF THE APA

IN ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA (JAN. 2010)

PLUTARCH AND THE SECOND SOPHISTIC

Sponsored by the International Plutarch Society
Organized by Mark Beck

The Second Sophistic is a period (ca. 60-260 CE) of heightened awareness among the Greek elite of their great cultural legacy in a world dominated by Rome. The writings of Plutarch represents many of the main intellectual currents of this movement and he has been described as “perhaps the most important author of the second sophistic period” (Simon Swain). The main focus of this panel will be to explore Plutarch’s epideictic speeches or declamations, as they are called, the body of his writings that perhaps most clearly aligns him with other sophists: On the Fortune of the Romans, On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander I and II, Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?. We also invite papers that investigate the various other writings of Plutarch against the backdrop of his literary environment. Contrasts are invited between Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom, Arrian, Appian, Athenaeus, Philostratus, Lucian, Aelius Aristides, Apollodorus, Cassius Dio, Pausanias, Polyaenus, etc. Various approaches may focus inter alia on the transformative interpretations of the Greek past in the Second Sophistic, single topics such as Alexander the Great or the Trojan War, Parthia, sympotic literature, declamation, biographical literature and historiography, politics, local history, the recasting of Classical authors, mythography, military tactics, religious syncretism, Roman citizenship and Greek identity, literary style, translations, forms of archaism (e.g. Atticism), philhellenism, the Roman emperor and the Greek philosophic advisor, etc.

Abstracts of 500-800 words for papers requiring not more than twenty minutes for delivery should be submitted by February 10th 2009 to Mark Beck. This may be done by email: BECKMA@mailbox.sc.edu; by FAX: (803) 777-0454, or by mail: University of South Carolina, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Columbia, South Carolina 29208. Consultation by phone is welcome at (803) 407-5741. All abstracts will be judged anonymously. Membership in the International Plutarch Society is not required.