The Fourteenth Conference on Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World will take place in Jerusalem (Israel) from Sunday 20 June 2021 to Wednesday 23 June 2021. Classicists, historians, students of comparative religion, the Hebrew Bible, early Christian and Rabbinic traditions, as well as scholars in other fields with an interest in oral cultures are cordially invited.
The conference will follow the same format as the previous conferences, held in Hobart (1994), Durban (1996), Wellington (1998), Columbia, Missouri (2000), Melbourne (2002), Winnipeg (2004), Auckland (2006), Nijmegen (2008), Canberra (2010), Ann Arbor (2012), Atlanta (2014), Lausanne (2016), and Austin TX (2019). It is planned that the refereed proceedings once again be published by E.J. Brill in the “Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World” series.
Organizers: Margalit Finkelberg, Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, Donna Shalev
Location: Jerusalem, Israel (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and
Hebrew University)
Dates: Sunday 20 June – Wednesday 23 June 2021.
Theme: Textualization
Keynote: Professor Niall Slater (Classics, Emory University)
The theme for the conference is “Textualization”. Recent decades have witnessed a strong and growing international interest in the broader interface and interpenetration of oral and literate cultures and practices in the ancient world, with later parallels. Our conference proposes a comparative study of the ways in which ancient Greek, Roman, and other societies continually negotiated the interaction between a largely oral culture and new needs and opportunities for textualization of otherwise oral genres and practices and of the process of textualization as such.
Papers in response to this theme are invited on topics related to the ancient Mediterranean world or, for comparative purposes, other times, places, and cultures. Also welcome are papers that engage with the transition from an oral to a literate society, or which consider the topic of textualization.
Further details about fees, accommodation and other conference-related activities will be circulated later.
Papers should be 20 minutes in length. Anonymous abstracts of up to 350 words (not including bibliography) should be submitted as Word files by 31 December 2020. Please send abstracts to: oralityandliteracy14@gmail.com
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