9:00 am – 6:30 pm
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies (Columbia University, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027), 5th floor conference room. Open to the public; in-person and on Zoom.
“A Roman World?: Imperial Power and Provincial Communities”
Columbia University, Italian Academy, 5th floor conference room
open to the public; in-person and on Zoom
Please fill out this form if you plan to attend the conference remotely. Upon registration you will receive the Zoom link, which will be also circulated on the morning of the event: https://forms.gle/tfvQqK3TNnjvZaPP7
The phrase “the Roman world” has long served as a useful shorthand to describe Rome’s vast sphere of influence. Yet it homogenizes: the peoples who inhabited the Roman Empire were tremendously diverse; until 212 CE most were not, legally speaking, Roman citizens. Moreover, they exerted great agency in their responses to and relationships with Roman power and, in so doing, profoundly shaped the empire’s social, political, cultural, and economic expressions.
“A Roman World?: Imperial Power and Provincial Communities” shares new research that explores these dynamics from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Emphasizing a diversity of actors, regions, and media, this workshop-conference addresses topics that include the creation of new Italian identities in the Republican province of Africa; the relationships between industrial activity in Carthago Nova and the natural environment; and the use of portrait sculpture by religious communities in imperial Thessaloniki as a means by which locals redefined themselves in relation to Rome. “A Roman World?” rejects the traditional dichotomy of colonizer and colonized and instead interrogates the politics of writing and rewriting the Roman past. Ultimately, it presents a new history of a world that was, in important ways, not Roman at all.
SCHEDULE
Friday, April 28, 2023
A Roman World?: Imperial Power and Provincial Communities
9-9:30
Light breakfast
9:30-9:45
Welcome address by Sailakshmi Ramgopal (Columbia University)
9:45-10:45
Opening keynote: Alicia Jiménez (Duke University)
“The Parlance of Things: Female Honorific Statues in Rome and the Provinces”
10:45-11:45
Lindsey Mazurek (University of Indiana – Bloomington)
“What Do Portraits Want? Statues and Religious Agency in Roman Thessaloniki”
11:45-12:45
Linda Gosner (Texas Tech)
“Craft and Industry in Carthago Nova: A Local History of Ecology, Economy, and Empire in Roman Iberia”
12:45-1:15
Discussion led by Alicia Jiménez
1:15-2:20
Lunch break
2:30-3:30
Lisa Eberle (Universität Tübingen – remote)
“Dardanians in Etruscan: Property, Community, and Identity between Italia and Africa in the first century BCE”
3:30-4:30
Sailakshmi Ramgopal (Columbia University)
“Civis Romanus Sum: Citizenship, Power, and Provincial Administration”
4:30-5:30
Closing keynote: Katherine Blouin (University of Toronto – Scarborough)
“Whose Roman World? On Roman Egypt and Modernity”
5:30-6
Discussion led by Katherine Blouin
6-6:45
Reception
Center for the Ancient Mediterranean
Department of History
Classical Studies Program
Department of Classics
Department of Art History & Archaeology
Columbia Center for Archaeology
Image credit: Bramble Lee Pryde
