Just For Show conference program

Just for Show?  Displaying Wealth and Performing Status from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

University of Bristol, Department of Classics and Ancient History, March 19^th and 20^th 2009

Status is one of the key terms of social analysis, especially in the study of pre-industrial societies; it seems to capture the actors’ perception of their own behaviour and motivation more precisely than categories coined by modern observers, such as ‘class’. The conference will focus on two important aspects of status: how it is created – indeed, constantly re-created and negotiated – and how individuals and groups interact accordingly. Just for Show? emphasises status as performance, offering new ways of understanding how pre-industrial societies structure themselves and how individuals establish and negotiate their own and others’ identities within them. The conference encompasses both the economic and the social, from the nexus between material wealth, social position and different forms of power (economic, social, political, and ideological) to concepts like social competence, prestige, cultural affirmation, morality and emotions. It further offers interpretations and contextualization for behaviour and activities that may otherwise seem curious or strange to the modern observer. Just for show? covers different periods and geographical contexts of the ancient Mediterranean world and its spatial and temporal neighbours, from ancient Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages.

Programme:

Day 1: 19^th March, Thursday

Room 2.12 Royal Fort House

• 10:00: Welcome/opening
• 10:15-10:45: Neville Morley (Bristol): Status as Performance
• 11:00-11:30: Silke Knippschild (Bristol): The abduction and destruction of religious and political identifiers as status performance
• 12:00-12:30: Lin Foxhall (Leicester): Performing the body: self and status in Ancient Greece

• 14:30-15:00: Sitta Von Reden (Augsburg): From citizen to subject: changing forms of social power in the Hellenistic world
• 15:15-15:45: David N. Edwards (Leicester): Manifesting status on the African margins of the Classical world
• 16:30-17:00: Martin Jehne (Dresden): Performing senatorial status in the Roman Republic: the limits of displaying wealth
• 17:15-17:45: Roland Mayer (KCL): Material commemoration of the acquisition of ‘gloria’, (temples, basilicas, statues)

Day 2: 20^th March, Friday

Room G12 Victoria Rooms

• 9:45-10:15: Víctor Revilla (Barcelona): Wealth, status and liberti in Roman society: an ambiguous relationship
• 10:30-11:00: Marta García Morcillo (Leicester): The consumption of material luxury in imperial Rome and in Late Antiquity
• 11:30-12:00: David Konstan (Brown): Forgiveness as adjustment of status

• 14:00-14:30: Gillian Clark (Bristol): Gratia: grace and favour in Roman law and Augustine's theology
• 14:45-15:15: Filippo Carlà (Turin/Heidelberg): Gold and gift in Gregory of Tours
• 15.45-16:15: Stephen D’Evelyn (Bristol): The meaning of status: problems of wealth, power, and grace in the interpretation of lyrics by Venantius Fortunatus

• 16:30-17:00: Anke Holdenried (Bristol): Men and prophetic authority in the twelfth century
• 17:45-18:15: Mary Garrison (York): Friendship in the monastic epistolary culture of the Middle Ages

* All papers will be followed by discussions

For enquiries please contact: 

Silke Knippschild: clzsk@bristol.ac.uk

Marta García: mgm10@le.ac.uk

Stephen D’Evelyn: husmde@bristol.ac.uk

Supported by the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts and the Bristol Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition