Memoria Romana

Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Max Planck International Research Prize in the Humanities

The project "Memoria Romana: Memory in Roman Civilization" was initiated in 2009 with the award of a Max-Planck Prize for International Cooperation, in the amount of EUR 750,000, to Professor Karl Galinsky, Cailloux Centennial Professor of Classics and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In the humanities, this award is made every four years and the subject is specified; in this case it was Gedächtnisgeschichte. The project is based at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, which made the successful application.


Historical scholarship centers on determining what actually happened and why (cf. von Ranke’s famous dictum, so zu schreiben wie es war). Studies of historical, social, and cultural memory are complementary: they concentrate on what people, and especially groups of people, remember, how these memories evolve, and how they shape identities. Ancient Rome was a memory culture par excellence. Memory pervades all aspects of Roman culture: literature (incl. historiography), art, architecture, religion, and social and political history. Memory, therefore, is a concrete entity in Roman civilization and modern memory approaches do not need to be imposed artificially or extraneously on this organic presence.


The major undertaking, with a large allocation of funds, in the first two years of the project was to support the work especially of younger scholars in this area on an international basis (the modalities for the applications can be accessed here, for informational purposes). We received many more applications than we could fund and the funds have been expended as of late 2011. We are supporting 14 doctoral fellowships (several for two years) and 17 other research projects by postdocs. The objective has been to employ and test some perspectives, methods, and impulses from current work on Gedächtnisgeschichte (a.k.a. the memory boom) over a broad spectrum of Roman phenomena.


In the final two years (2012/2013), the emphasis is shifting more toward publication. This includes collected papers from some of the highly successful conferences sponsored by Memoria Romana and monographs resulting from the work of its grantees and others. A limited number of subventions is available.


We welcome suggestions and comments. Please write to Prof. Galinsky at galinsky@austin.utexas.edu.


Links: Max Planck Society, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, video clip of Max-Planck award.

--RECENT & UPCOMING EVENTS--


April 20-22 (2012) : Workshop for US dissertation fellowship award recipients (UT Austin).


Sept. 28-30 (2012) : Conference on Religious Pluralism (UT Austin).
The conference will take place under the auspices of the Max-Planck Prize for International Cooperation; The Dept. of Religious Studies at UT Austin and IKGF at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (click here) signed a collaborative agreement in 2010.

Feb. 22-23 (2013) : Keynote by Prof. Karl Galinsky - Univ. of Michigan Classics graduate conference, "Constructing the Past: Abandonment and Renewal in the Ancient World."


April 18-20 (2013) : Conference at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA -- Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire



--PAST EVENTS--


Conferences and Events, 2010


Conferences and Events, 2011



--NOTA BENE--


• Memoria Romana has a group on Facebook: click here to view our page and request to join.


New Feature! We are working on documenting the use of Latin terms for memory by ancient Roman authors. Charts are currently available for Vergil's Aeneid, Georgics, and Eclogues, as well as for Livy's Ab urbe condita, Books 1-5.

Congratulations!


... to Lauren Donovan Ginsberg (tenure-track Assistant Professor, Dept. of Classics, University of Cincinnati)


... to Aaron Seider (Visiting Professor of Classics, College of the Holy Cross)


... to Maggie Popkin for defending her dissertation in suitably triumphal style at the Fine Arts Institute of NYU on April 16th. It will be a great book!


... and to
Claudia Moser, who has won a Prix de Rome Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome for 2012-13. Tanti auguri, Claudia!

FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS SUPPORTED BY MEMORIA ROMANA:


Alessandro Barchiesi, The War for Italia: Conflict and Collective Memory in Vergil's Aeneid. (University of California Press)


Virginia Fabrizi, Mores veteresque novosque. La rappresentazione del passato e del presente di Roma negli Annales di Ennio. (Pisa, ETS)


Damien Nelis and Joseph Farrell, eds., Augustan Poetry and the Roman Republic. (Oxford University Press)


Emmanuelle Raymond (dir.), Vox poetae: Manifestations auctoriales dans l'épopée gréco-latine. (Lyon, CECOR)
   
Now available! View online at: http://www.decitre.fr/livres/vox-poetae-9782904974380.html


Aaron Seider, Memory in Vergil's Aeneid: Creating the Past. (Cambridge University Press)

-Look out also for Aaron's article, entitled, "Competing Commemorations: Apostrophes of the Dead in the Aeneid", in AJP 133.2, June 2012.


• And more to come!

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT & CFP

--from two Memoria Romana award recipients:


Maggie Popkin and Susan Blevins will be chairing a session at this year's annual U.S. meeting of the Theoretical Archaeological Group (TAG) at the University of Buffalo, May 17-20. The session is titled, Remembering Material Culture: Archaeology and the Science of Memory.


A list of approved sessions, the call for abstract submissions, and more information can be found here.


Note: the deadline for abstract submissions has been extended to April 1, 2012.

Last update: May 21, 2012 (s_davies@mail.utexas.edu)

For educational and non-profit use only