Call for Papers: Comedy and Commerce: Ancient Economies in the Light of Comic Texts from Classical Greece to Imperial Rome
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12. March 2025
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Call for papers
Comedy and Commerce: Ancient Economies in the Light of Comic Texts from Classical Greece to Imperial Rome
Internation Conference
Cologne, 9-10 April 2026
Deadline for submission: 6 April 2025
Comic texts – comedies, satires, collections fables or dicta – are an unlikely, yet, on closer inspection, enormously rewarding source to understand business in the ancient Greco-Roman world. An international conference, to be held on 9 to 10 April 2026 in Cologne, Germany, will focus on the methodological opportunities and challenges of this peculiar type of source material and discuss its contribution to new approaches to ancient economies.
The conference aims to discuss these questions in an interdisciplinary way, combining social, economic, and legal historical approaches with literary perspectives. The diachronic perspective from Classical Greece to Imperial Rome allows us to determine more precisely the interrelationship between contextual and genre-specific features. The guiding premise of the conference is that comic texts are one of the most important sources for economic history, which, after decades of focusing on institutions, is now turning to a history of perceptions and mentalities of economic activity. What the ancient Greeks and Romans laughed at reveals to us what they considered economically rational and conceivable in their everyday interactions.
Scholars of all career stages are cordially invited to send in proposals for a contribution to the conference. Talks are scheduled with 30-minutes slots, with additional time for discussion. Publication of the papers as a collective volume is planned.
Applicants are kindly asked to send the title and outline of topic (ca. 300 words) of their proposal, together with a CV, to dorothea.rohde@uni-koeln.de and M.Hinsch@lmu.de by 6 April 2025.
Contact
Dorothea Rohde: dorothea.rohde@uni-koeln.de
Moritz Hinsch: M.Hinsch@lmu.de
The complete Call for Papers can be found here.
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