CFP CCC (Lyon, July 15-18): (Re)inventing Sappho: New Approaches to Sappho from the Greek Fragments to the Twenty-First Century

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(Re)inventing Sappho: New Approaches to Sappho from the Greek Fragments to the Twenty-First Century
Panel at the 13th Celtic Conference in Classics
(Lyon, France, 15-18 July 2020)
Proposal submission deadline: 6th March 2020
Confirmed Speakers:
Sandra Boehringer (Université de Strasbourg)
Jacqueline Fabre-Serris (Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3)
Ellen Greene (The University of Oklahoma)
Andre Lardinois (Radboud University)
Thea Selliaas Thorsen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Sappho’s manifold afterlives since antiquity have endowed her with a range of personas, going from the canonical and iconic, to the comical and the perverse. Spanning creative and scholarly responses to the poet, these various interpretations, (re)adaptations and (re)constructions have produced a “Sappho” who is now as fluid and queer as she has ever been. Concurrently, recent Sappho scholarship, as well as discoveries of new fragments, have given rise to several new methodologies and perspectives, including interdisciplinary, comparative, philological, and reception-based approaches. Our panel aims to embrace this plurality by bringing these contrasting methodologies into productive conversation with one another. By re-examining the notion of who (and what) Sappho is, this panel will problematise the “invention” of Sappho and resituate her, along with her poetic fragments and later receptions, in contemporary scholarly discourse.
We welcome papers in the fields of Classics, Ancient History, and Reception Studies, with a preference for talks which fully and boldly engage with new approaches to Sappho’s life, work, and reception. In keeping with the bilingual tradition of the Celtic Conference in Classics, and this year’s venue (Lyon), we are especially keen on contributions about the reception of Sappho by French poets, scholars and translators, as well as Francophone feminist writers such as Wittig, Kristeva and Irigaray. The panel will be fully bilingual and we therefore accept papers both in French and English. Papers might fall within but are not limited to the following categories:
  *   Sappho’s fragments
  *   Sappho as a historical personage
  *   Sappho and literary theory, queer theory, feminist theory, and other ideological approaches
  *   Ancient, medieval, or modern receptions of Sappho, including theatrical re-adaptations, Sappho in pedagogy and education, and multimedial representations of Sapphic poetry
  *   The role played by Sappho within LGBTQ+ communities and literature
To encourage a variety of approaches, we will welcome two different paper lengths: 20 minutes and 40 minutes. Please, submit a proposal of 300 words for a 20-minute paper and 500 words for the 40-minute option. Abstracts must be written either in French or English. The submission deadline for abstracts is 6th March 2020.
Submissions and queries should be directed to the following address: reinventingsappho@gmail.com<mailto: reinventingsappho@gmail.com>.

Please, include a short biography and specify your affiliation in the body of your email: attach the abstract as a separate file with no personal identification.
Notification of acceptance will be given in early April.
For further information on the Celtic Conference in Classics, please refer to the conference permanent website: www.celticconferenceinclassics.org< http://www.celticconferenceinclassics.org>.

For the full CfP and a select bibliography, follow this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10oInxcHYrIgr1exFBIKE-glDMOWvnlpG/view?usp=sharing

The panel convenors
Astrid Khoo (Harvard University)
Simona Martorana (Durham University)
Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University)
Rioghnach Sachs (King’s College London)