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ABSTRACTS (The titles of panels are listed in alphabetical order) (An asterisk (*) next to a panel title indicates that the panel has been specially organised for the conference) Special joint SCS (formerly APA)/CA Panel W(h)ither Philology Convener: Cynthia Damon (U Penn) on behalf of SCS "W(h)ither philology?" presents four papers that grapple with the contemporary meaning of and outlook for philology, issues that have particular salience in the wake of the 2014 reinvention of the American Philological Association as the Society for Classical Studies. Questions about the "project of philology" are once again in the air, and not just among classicists. Scholars of other ancient literary traditions claim philology as a superordinate disciplinary umbrella (see, e.g., http://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/en/revisiting-the-canons-of-textual- scholarship/profile/general-information.html). And practitioners of digital humanities proclaim new opportunities, and new urgencies, for philological enterprise (see, e.g., http://sites.tufts.edu/perseus updates/2013/04/04/the-open-philology-project-and-humboldt-chair-of-digital-humanities-at- leipzig/). The papers in this session range from critiques of philology's traditional claims to expositions of philological work at the digital frontier. They include theoretically sophisticated understandings of what philology is and technologically sophisticated manifestations of what philology does. Will Batstone (Ohio State), Why Philology deserves its underserved bad name Over twenty-five years ago in 1988 a conference at Harvard, organized by Jan Ziolkowski and called "On Philology," attempted to address the divide between theory and philology ("the deconstructive aims of some theory and the reconstructive project of philology" as Ziolkowski put it). Many of the issues addressed at that conference, and later published as On Philology (1990), are still with us. In fact, if the recent renaming of the American Philological Association is any indicator, "philology" remains a controversial label. I would like to begin with that conference as a basis for arriving at some understanding of what the "project of philology" is (its gender bias, its terms of value, its oppositional posture, its claims upon history, fact, and culture; its epistemological assumptions). My hope here is to avoid a merely personal definition and view of philology. This will entail a comparison with the competing claims of theory in an attempt to articulate where the divide between the "two castes" lies. I will then argue that the two projects are co-implicated and their strengths interdependent. This does not mean that philology can use theory to ask questions that keep the ancient texts relevant, that theory is some addition to the strengths, skill, and proven value of philology (the Ziolkowski position). Nor does it mean, or should it mean, that "Lady Theory," with her meretricious tendencies, goes her merry way without recourse to the "hard facts" of philology but could make use of them and is really useful when it does. I will argue that philology is equally meretricious and by not owning up to that fact it deserves its undeserved bad name. In fact the objection to philology is in large part its claim to sufficiency, fact, history and objectivity. It is here that theory is not an alternative, but offers a critique of philology that has its own rigor. In fact, theory can be as manly as philology in its claim to rigor, truth, and knowledge. And that's what irks philologists. But this is only half the story: theory itself, especially as practiced by many in the Classics today, could do with a good dose of philology's attention to detail: What really is the Lacanian real? Or Kristevan intertextuality? Or the status of "intention" in the field of analysis? Or a Derridean deconstruction? In this regard, this paper could also be titled: Why Theory deserves its undeserved bad name. 1 Joy Connolly (NYU), Past forever now: Philology and the press of history Conversations about the proper definition and role of philology in Classics over the past twenty years tend to circle back to the question "What does a classicist need to know?" (See the minutes of the 1995 workshop on Classics graduate education at the University of Pennsylvania online at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~jfarrell/wirphil.html). A few years before that, at the 1988 conference on philology at Harvard organized by Jan Ziolkowski, Jonathan Culler rejected the claim that philology's knowledge is "basic or foundational, a kind of first knowledge that serves as the precondition of any further literary criticism or historical and interpretive work." He sought to show that the activities of reconstructing texts and reading them accurately rely on a scaffolding of propositions about a given culture at a given time and about the relations between the meaning of a word and its culture. I share Culler's (and in the same collection, Barbara Johnson's) capacious understanding of philology as a practice of reading that at its best breaks through the crusts of preconceived meanings and even further, through preconceived notions of how literature means. For me the question of where philology is going—what it can or should be—is essentially a question about thought and temporality. That is, it challenges us to think about how to sustain historical consciousness in a time of incessant change, heightened awareness of contingency, and the annihilation of time and space by digital technology. I see the close reading and interpretation of texts in dialectical terms, where critical readers activate the past and thus unsettle our sense of the past's and the present's inevitability. In this paper I will work with Walter Benjamin's and Hannah Arendt's reflections on the relations of past, present, and future to make an argument—and just as important, start a conversation—about the potential for a collective sense of purposiveness that drives different styles of work with classical texts. Patrick Finglass (Nottingham/All Souls), OCTs online: The digital future of classical editions A few weeks ahead of the Classics launch of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, this paper investigates what digital editions and commentaries can offer classicists, and how digital platforms might affect the future production of works of scholarship. James Brusuelas (Oxford), Philology Beyond the Codex: Proteus Although philology and the 'book' have been an inseparable pair for centuries, whether a papyrus bookroll or a bound codex, there is now much ado about digital editions. But what exactly constitutes a digital edition? More importantly, what is a digital critical edition? What is its form and functionality? Looking forward to the needs of Classics and classicists not just five years from now but twenty years from now, what becomes of philology and the practice of textual criticism without the codex? The Proteus project aims to address such line of questioning. Launching in Spring 2015, it is a digital ecosystem for both creating next-generation critical editions and generating the textual criticism that underwrites them. It is a virtual space for true collective critical editing, a process whereby multiple scholars and students can produce digital editions, suggest conjectures, and submit critical notes, all of which are then accessible for future research. Focusing on papyrus fragments and commentaries in its first iteration, citable, scholarly use is of the utmost importance. But Proteus is not just simply implementing the necessary critical and testimonial apparatus, the attributes that make a Greek or Latin edition critical, but embracing the machine for what it is: not a book. A new text editor, data visualization, search, and version control are being employed to re-think how a user interfaces a text that can constantly change and its required metadata. Our vision is to not render digitally a carbon copy of a printed page. Moving beyond the codex mindset, Proteus aims to make digital philology accessible, fluid, engaging, and didactic. 2 Roundtable: Schools, Education and Sustainable Development Convenor: Genevieve Liveley (Chair, CUCD Education Committee) Convened by the CUCD Education Committee, and responding to one of the key themes for the 2015 CA conference, this roundtable discussion panel will explore the current and future grassroots sustainability of Classics as a subject taught in schools, communities, and universities. Key questions for provocation, consideration and debate will include: How sustainable are university outreach initiatives? If universities are prepared to teach Latin and Greek for free (and to accept students onto degree programmes with no prior qualifications in the subject), what are the risks to schools and to the future of the subject? How have recent government reforms to qualifications and curriculum policy innovations impacted upon Classics? What are the wider ramifications of moves to make Classics qualifications more ‘rigorous’? If universities continue to train far greater numbers of Classics and Ancient History PhDs than there are academic posts, how might they better support their doctorates to make a success of a school based career? Four short presentations (of up to 15 minutes each, followed by 10 minutes of related preliminary discussion) addressing these key issues will be followed by an open plenary discussion (20 minutes) of wider issues of sustainability as they impact upon our discipline and broad subject community. Four short presentations (of up