CfP (January 2020, Washington DC): Topography and Material Culture in Fifth Century Drama

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The socio-political context of ancient Greek drama has received sustained
attention following groundbreaking publications (e.g. Foley, 1985; Winkler
and Zeitlin, 1990), and more recently, several authors have engaged
specifically with spatial concerns in theatrical performance (e.g. Edmunds,
1996; Rehm, 2002; Lowe, 2006; Futo Kennedy, 2006). Scholars have
additionally turned to fifth-century dramatic texts to conceptualize the
role of landscape (Worman, 2014, 2015), props (Mueller, 2016), and the
issues they and other objects generate therein (Telò and Mueller [eds.],
2018). Given this rich array of scholarship and ongoing archaeological
discovery (e.g. Papastamati-von Moock, 2014, 2015), critical and innovative
engagement with questions concerning how to integrate literary and material
approaches to Greek drama is timely. In this panel, we aim to take a deeper
look into the real and imagined materialities of tragedy, comedy, and satyr
play and how they may impact and refine our understanding of both dramatic
action and its political implications. Accordingly, we invite fine-grained
analyses and broader reflections on ways to study topography, landscape,
props, and material references more generally in Greek drama.

Papers may address (but are not limited to) such questions as:

– How might momentary invocation of specific, tangible topographic
features convey meaning through juxtaposition to a given play’s more
sustained setting?
– Can deixis be deployed to analyze moments in which real and imagined
landscapes overlap, however ephemerally?
– How do physical settings illuminate political dimensions of
fifth-century drama?
– Can we use material references to nuance our understanding of the
relationship between “politics” and theater more broadly?
– Are there differences that can be traced in the way that tragedy,
comedy, and satyr play refer to topography and/or material culture?
– Are there instances of tension between the immediate setting and other
settings, both visible and remote, invoked in the course of dramatic
action? To what effect?
– Playwrights may invoke realia (both landscapes and objects) on account
of their cultural associations, but how can we accommodate the multivariate
interpretations of what those associations might be, taking into account
the agency of both objects and audience members?
– How might a given playwright utilize props to convey multiple
temporalities during a single performance?

Please send abstracts for 20-minute papers to be read at the 2020 AIA/SCS
meeting as email attachments to info@classicalstudies.org by February 8,
2019. The subject line of the email should be the title of this panel and
the text of your abstract should be anonymous and follow the guidelines on
the SCS website. Abstracts will be evaluated anonymously by two reviewers.
Please address questions about the panel to either Anne Duray (
aduray@stanford.edu) or Simone Oppen (sao2126@columbia.edu).