Conference: “Departing the Polis: Travel, Travellers and Panhellenism in the extant plays and fragments of Greek drama”. CADRE, University of Nottingham, Wednesday 8th and Thursday 9th of July 2020

Organisers: Edmund Stewart (Nottingham) and Anna Lamari (Thessaloniki)

Programme

Emmanuela Bakola (Warwick) ‘Travelling and mapping the cosmos in Aeschylean tragedy’

Lyndsay Coo (Bristol) ‘Wandering satyrs: travel in classical satyr drama’

Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson (Sydney) ‘Ἑλλὰς Ἑλλάδος : the Centripetal Politics of the Athenian Dionysia’

Patrick Finglass (Bristol) ‘Tragic networks in Sophocles’ Tereus’

Massimo Giuseppetti (Rome) ‘Euripides’ Melanippe Plays and the Politics of Greek Identity’

Edward Harris (Edinburgh and Durham) ‘Suppliants in Greek Tragedy’

Malcolm Heath (Leeds) ‘Travels and travails in Euripides’ Medea’

Lucy Jackson (Durham) ‘Choral performers on tour in the fifth and fourth centuries BC’

Andreas Markantonatos (University of the Peloponnese) ‘Oedipus and Polynices: Two Sides of Exile in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus’

Judith Mossman (Coventry) ‘Mapping Medea: a mobile heroine in Euripides and beyond’

Eoghan Moloney (Winchester) ‘Reboot? The royal Macedonians take the stage’

Martin Revermann (University of Toronto) ‘Travel for the cure: disease, mobility, renewal and their dramatic filters’

Alan Sommerstein (Nottingham) ‘Triptolemus and other tragic globetrotters’

Edmund Stewart (Nottingham) ‘Theoria: Pilgrims and Sanctuaries in Greek Tragedy’

Oliver Taplin (Oxford) ‘The Seven on the Way to Thebes’

Anna Uhlig (UC Davis) ‘Io in Egypt’

Conference Description

This event concerns the theme of travel in Greek drama. Tragedy and Comedy often present their heroes as wanderers: whether that is the exiled Oedipus, the hunted Orestes, the itinerant satyrs and their father Silenus, or the comic protagonist Pisetaerus in search for a better life in Cloud Cuckoo-land.

The conference brings together international scholars and experts on ancient drama to consider why this (sometimes neglected) theme is so prominent in ancient drama. Recent scholarship has shown that the context of ancient dramatic performance extended far beyond the single city of Athens and that both audience members and performers were frequently travellers moving between festivals. This event will explore the ways in which tragedy and comedy were concerned not merely with the Greek city (or polis) but with the spaces between ancient cities and sanctuaries, on roads and sea lanes filled with wanderers and exiles, travellers, traders and tourists.

This event is for anyone interested in ancient drama, including tragedy, satyr play and comedy, and classical antiquity in general. Undergraduate and postgraduate students are most welcome.

Edmund Stewart

Assistant Professor in Ancient Greek History

The University of Nottingham

B5 Humanities Building

 +44 (0)115 95 14810