[Usyd_Classics_Events] USYD Classics Research Seminar #4, 2024: Estelle Strazdins

[Ben Brown]

Dear Friends of Classics and Ancient History at USYD,

Please join us at the Boardroom of the V. Gordon Childe Centre (formerly CCANESA) or on Zoom (link below) for the fourth presentation in our Semester 1, 2024 Research Seminar Series.

April 18th (Thursday, 4pm AEST/UTC+10)




Estelle Strazdins (Australian National University)




Greeks in the Roman Empire Thinking about the Future



Abstract

In a 2019 JRS article, Brent Shaw claimed that people in the Roman empire did not possess a notion of the future equivalent to our own – ‘time that is densely populated with things that are planned, known and solidly pictured’ (Shaw 2019, 6). His evidence was largely economic and lay in a perceived failure to organise for the future in concrete and practical ways nor borrow against its projected capital. Imperial Greeks and the 'Second Sophistic', moreover, were famous for their obsession with Classical and Archaic Greece. As this paper will demonstrate, however, imperial Greek cities and their elite inhabitants did have a conception of their own, if to a large degree abstract, futurity. This sense of the future was grounded in their rich engagement with the Hellenic past and buttressed by the notion of monumental permanence and the canon of great literature. For imperial Greeks, moreover, futurity was regularly embedded in concrete and commemorative space; it was tethered to cultural memory and a deep historical consciousness. Using material and literary evidence centred on several Greek cities, such as Athens, Corinth, and Palmyra, this paper will explore various modes of civic and personal engagement with the future (e.g., local constructions of time, the promotion of the goddess Tyche, material benefaction, the creation of literary cityscapes) and their impact on Hellenic identity in the Roman world.


Biography

An alumnus of the University of Melbourne, Estelle was awarded a Clarendon Scholarship to complete a DPhil in Oxford completing a thesis on 'The Future of the Second Sophistic' (2008-2012) during which she held an Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens' (AAIA) Fellowship for Research in Greece (2009-2010). Estelle has also held a series of postdoctoral fellowships for research on Roman-period material culture in Greece and Turkey from the Onassis Foundation, the Australian Endeavour Awards, and the IKY Foreigners scheme. From 2014-2018 she lectured for the BSA's Undergraduate Course, The Archaeology and Topography of Greece. In 2018, Estelle returned to the UK for a position funded by the A.G. Leventis Foundation at the University of Cambridge as a Research Associate and Assistant Editor of the Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World, led by Profs Paul Cartledge and Paul Christesen. From 2020 to 2023, she was Lecturer in Greek History at the University of Queensland. Estelle is currently Lecturer in Classics at the ANU.

Zoom details: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/85192829117<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/bEtUCBNqjlCPPzpk1hzfNMf?domain=t.e2ma.net>
Need help using Zoom? Visit the Zoom Help Center: https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/boycCD1vlpTjjDNW1c5BDY9?domain=support.zoom.us<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/lzM0CE8wmrt11kVzmhpCKa7?domain=t.e2ma.net>

All best,

Ben
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