SOCIETY FOR CLASSICAL STUDIES

159th Annual Meeting

January 6–9, 2028 • Denver, Colorado

Call for Papers for a Panel Sponsored by the Vergilian Society

Succession in Vergil 

Organized by Sergio Casali, University of Rome Tor Vergata

The Vergilian Society invites papers for its panel at the 2028 Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies that explore succession in Vergil’s poetry and its reception. We welcome contributions on the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, as well as on their reception in any period, language, or cultural setting.

Succession connects some of Vergil’s most hopeful visions of the future with his most searching representations of loss. Gallus receives the pipes once given to Hesiod (Ecl. 6.69–73); the bees’ community endures as one generation replaces another (G. 4.206–209); Anchises’ vision of Rome’s future culminates in the lament for Marcellus (Aen. 6.860–886). These scenes offer different ways of imagining what can survive its present possessor, and what cannot. The handing on of a song, the persistence of a community, and the expectations invested in an heir raise questions about the relationship between continuity and change.

Succession also depends on claims that may be recognized, negotiated, or resisted. What entitles someone to take a predecessor’s place: descent, adoption, marriage, merit, divine sanction, or conquest? How do inherited obligations shape a successor’s freedom to act? The passage from Troy to Italy and Rome makes the survival of names, customs, and memories inseparable from the transformation of peoples and political authority. Vergil’s own engagements with Greek and Roman predecessors invite related questions about how poets establish a lineage, accommodate competing inheritances, and make room for new kinds of poetry.

These questions extend into Vergil’s reception. Later authors, translators, and artists may claim his authority, challenge it, or redirect it towards communities and experiences given little space in his works. Continuations and rewritings can reopen futures that his narratives leave suspended or foreclose. At the same time, Vergilian accounts of descent and the transfer of power can authorize, or help to question, later dynastic, imperial, and national genealogies. We therefore invite attention both to those who become Vergil’s successors and to the changing meanings of succession within the reception of his poetry.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Kinship and inheritance: biological and adoptive descent, marriage, and the agency of mothers, daughters, and sons in establishing or contesting succession.
• The succession to Aeneas: Ascanius/Iulus and Silvius Postumus, competing genealogical traditions, and the negotiation of Trojan and Latin descent in accounts of Rome’s origins.
• Political succession: transfers of sovereignty, competing claims to legitimacy, the relationship between inheritance and conquest, and Augustan dynastic expectations.
• Interrupted or excluded futures: premature death, childlessness, disinheritance, failed successors, and the emotional or ethical costs of continuity.
• Land, labor, and natural renewal: dispossession and changing ownership, the transmission of agricultural knowledge, and the relationship between generational replacement and recurrent natural cycles.
• Poetic succession: Vergil’s Greek and Roman predecessors, the transmission of pastoral song, literary rivalry, and transformations of inherited genres across his career.
• Narrative and historical time: genealogies, prophecy, repetition, and endings as means of constructing or unsettling continuity between past and future.
• Successors to Vergil: translation, adaptation, and continuation as ways of claiming or contesting a literary inheritance, including the revision of established genealogies of literary authority.
• The transmission and uses of Vergilian authority: commentary, education, and canon formation; later appropriations of his models of succession, including their political uses and critiques.

We particularly welcome papers that bring these areas into conversation while developing a focused argument. The panel aims to explore what makes succession possible or persuasive, and how Vergilian poetry and its readers imagine the responsibilities and possibilities of being an heir.

Please send an abstract for a 15–20-minute paper to Sergio Casali (casali@uniroma2.it) by February 15, 2027, using the subject line “abstract_SCS2028”. Abstracts should be no more than 500 words, excluding bibliography, and should follow the SCS Abstract Submission Guidelines. They should state the paper’s argument, situate it within relevant scholarship, and indicate the evidence to be discussed.

Submission information

Abstracts will be evaluated anonymously. Please omit your name and other identifying information from the abstract, and provide your name, affiliation, and paper title in the accompanying email. Decisions will be communicated by March 1, 2027, in time for authors whose abstracts are not selected to participate in the individual abstract submission process for the 2028 SCS meeting.

PDF Version

The post Call for Papers: SCS 2028 appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

Virgil’s canonical status has entangled him in the moral, political, and critical judgments of readers. We can see this phenomenon from the beginning of the biographical tradition: his disputed self-censorship of the end of the Georgics; his alleged request to burn the Aeneid; the emperor Caligula’s threat to burn Virgil’s poems and imagines (nullius ingenii minimaeque doctrinae, Calig. 34). We therefore propose a symposium that focuses on Virgil and censorship, tracing the history of how readers shape his poetry to reflect their own expectations. See more

The post Call for Papers: Symposium Cumanum 2027 appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

JANUARY 7-10, 2027
BOSTON

Call for Papers for Panel Sponsored by the Vergilian Society

“Vergil Beyond Europe”

For decades, scholarship on the reception of Vergil has focused primarily on European contexts. As scholars and teachers of Vergil, we recognize how deeply his presence in European literatures and cultures has shaped our interpretation of his poetry. Yet Vergil’s influence has never been confined to Europe alone.

For the 2027 Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in Boston, the Vergilian Society invites proposals for papers that investigate Vergil’s reception in cultural and literary traditions beyond Europe. We are especially interested in case studies from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Slavic regions, but welcome explorations of any non-European context in which Vergil’s works have been read, adapted, or reimagined.

We hope that the papers on this panel will deepen our understanding of Vergil’s global afterlife, highlighting the diverse ways his poetry has interacted with–and interpreted by–different traditions. By tracing these encounters, we seek not only to expand the horizons of Vergilian reception studies but also to enrich the ways we read and teach Vergil today.Please send abstracts for 15-20 minute paper by February 23 to Zara Torlone (torlonzm@miamioh.edu) with the subject headings “abstract_SCS2027”. Abstracts should be 500 words or fewer (excl. bibliography) and should follow the guidelines for individual abstracts (see the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts). The abstracts will be judged anonymously and so should not reveal the author’s name, but the email should provide name, abstract title, and affiliation. Decisions will be communicated to the abstracts’ authors by the end of march, with enough time that those whose abstracts are not chosen can participate in the individual abstract submission process for the upcoming SCS meeting.

The post CFP SCS 2027: Call for Papers appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

We will consider a proposal on any theme, although preference may be given to a subject that has not been treated recently. Descriptions of previous symposia can be found here.

Each proposal should be prepared by the person who is intending to direct the symposium, or by the lead person if co-directors are envisioned.  The successful director will have logistical assistance from the Vergilian Society’s Italian staff and from the Executive Committee.

Proposals should be 250-300 words in length, giving a brief rationale for the theme, some thoughts on what subjects are likely to be treated, and the names of several scholars who have worked on this theme and might be approached to participate. As international meetings, our symposia attract participants from all over the world, but since the Vergilian Society is an Italian-American cultural association, we are especially interested in seeing solid participation from scholars in these two countries.

Proposals should be submitted electronically to the President of the Vergilian Society, Vassiliki Panoussi by March 15, 2025.  Informal inquiries are also welcome at this email address.

The post Call for Proposals: Symposium Vesuvianum 2026 appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

Symposium Vesuvianum, Oct. 10-13, 2024. Villa Vergiliana, Bacoli (NA), Italy

Organizers: Nicole G. Brown (Williams College), John Oksanish (Wake Forest
University)

For full details see the Symposium Vesuvianum 2024 page.

The post Call for Papers: 2024 Symposium Vesuvianum appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

JANUARY 2-5, 2025
PHILADELPHIA

Topic: Re-evaluating Turnus

Organized by Randall Ganiban, Department of Classics, Middlebury College

The post Call for Papers for Society of Classical Studies 156th Annual Meeting appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

25–29 June 2024, Villa Vergiliana, Italy

Co-Directors: Celia Campbell (Emory University), Bobby Xinyue (King’s College London).

Read the full description here.

The post Call for Papers: Symposium Cumanum 2024 appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

Each proposal should be prepared by the person who is intending to direct the symposium, or by the lead person if co-directors are envisioned.  The successful director will have logistical assistance from the Vergilian Society’s Italian staff and from the executive committee; a set of guidelines is available to assist in planning.

Proposals should be 250-300 words in length, giving a brief rationale for the theme, some thoughts on what kinds of subjects are likely to be treated, and the names of several scholars who have worked on this theme and might be approached to participate.  As international meetings, our symposia attract participants from all over the world, but since the Vergilian Society is an Italian-American cultural association, we are especially interested in seeing solid participation from scholars in these two countries.

Proposals should be submitted electronically by Monday, May 31, 2020, to the president of the Vergilian Society, Barbara Weiden Boyd, at bboyd@bowdoin.edu. Informal enquiries are also welcome at that email address.

The post Call for Proposals – Symposium Campanum 2022 appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

Co-Directors: Tedd A. Wimperis (Elon University) and David J. Wright (Fordham University)

Vergil’s poetry has long offered fertile ground for scholars engaging questions of race, ethnicity and national identity, owing especially to the momentous social changes to which his works respond (Syed 2005; Reed 2007; Fletcher 2014; Giusti 2018; Barchiesi, forthcoming). The complexities of identity reflected in his corpus have afforded rich insights into the poems themselves and the era’s political milieu; beyond their Roman context, across the centuries his poetry has been co-opted in both racist and nationalist rhetoric, and, at the same time, inspired multicultural receptions among its many audiences, from Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech to Gwendolyn Brooks’ The Anniad (e.g. Thomas 2001; Laird 2010; Ronnick 2010; Torlone 2014; Pogorzelski 2016).

This year’s theme invites diverse approaches to the ways in which Vergil’s poetry represents, constructs, critiques, or sustains collective identities, in the ancient Mediterranean and well beyond. It also aims to stimulate new connections between Vergilian study and wider interest in identity and multicultural exchange among classicists, as well as contemporary discourse on racism, colonialism, immigration, and nationalism. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• representations and expressions of identity among the poem’s characters or audiences
• global receptions of Vergil from the perspective of ethnic, regional, or national identity
• multiculturalism, cultural negotiation, and inclusivity inside and outside the poems
• identity in Roman ideology and imperialism
• paradigms of gender, sexuality, and geography in constructing identity
• forms of prejudice, stereotyping, or hate speech within the poems or inspired by them
• the loss or reinvention of identity through migration or exile
• areas of reception, contextualization, and contrast between Vergil and other authors or media, including material culture
• political appropriations of Vergil, including by identitarian and fascist ideologies
• inclusive approaches to Vergilian scholarship and pedagogy
• comparative studies of Vergil’s poetry to explore modern identities and racial justice movements

Confirmed Speakers:
Samuel Agbamu (Royal Holloway), Maurizio Bettini (University of Siena), Filippo Carlà-Uhink (Potsdam University), Anna Maria Cimino (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), Hardeep Dhindsa (King’s College London), K.F.B. Fletcher (Louisiana State University), Valentina Follo (American Academy in Rome), Elena Giusti (University of Warwick), Andrew Laird (Brown University), Jackie Murray (University of Kentucky), Nandini Pandey (University of Wisconsin), Michele Ronnick (Wayne State University), Caroline Stark (Howard University), Richard Thomas (Harvard University), Zara Torlone (Miami University), Adriana Vazquez (UCLA)

Please send abstracts of roughly 300 words to identityinvergil at gmail.com by December 1, 2020. Papers will be 20 minutes long, with time for discussion after each. We hope to gather an inclusive group of speakers from multiple backgrounds and academic ranks, and especially encourage submissions from scholars belonging to communities underrepresented in the field.

Participants arrive on June 22; we are planning to hold the conference at the Villa Vergiliana and enjoy visits to Vergilian sites alongside presentations and discussion. That said, in light of the uncertainties COVID-19 continues to present, including financial pressures in the academy that might make travel abroad (for a typically self-funded conference with a registration fee) less accessible for some participants, we are leaving open the option for a hybrid or virtual symposium, to be determined as events proceed; we are also pursuing sources of financial assistance for qualifying speakers. Whatever form it will ultimately take, we look forward to a vibrant and engaging symposium in June 2021.

You are welcome to contact the organizers with any questions about the symposium, including the status of remote participation options or possible funding aid: Tedd Wimperis (twimperis at elon.edu); David Wright (dwright31 at fordham.edu)

Works Cited

• Barchiesi, A. Forthcoming. The War for Italia: Conflict and Collective Memory in Vergil’s Aeneid. Berkeley.
• Fletcher, K.F.B. 2014. Finding Italy: Travel, Nation and Colonization in Vergil’s Aeneid. Ann Arbor.
• Giusti, E. 2018. Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid: Staging the Enemy under Augustus. Cambridge.
• Laird, A. 2010. “The Aeneid from the Aztecs to the Dark Virgin: Vergil, Native Tradition, and Latin Poetry in Colonial Mexico from Sahagún’s Memoriales (1563) to Villerías’ Guadalupe (1724).” In A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and Its Tradition, ed. Farrell and Putnam. Malden: 217-33.
• Pogorzelski, R.J. 2016. Virgil and Joyce: Nationalism and Imperialism in the Aeneid and Ulysses. Madison.
• Reed, J.D. 2007. Virgil’s Gaze: Nation and Poetry in the Aeneid. Princeton.
• Ronnick, M.V. 2010. “Vergil in the Black American Experience.” In A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and Its Tradition, ed. Farrell and Putnam. Malden: 376-90.
• Syed, Y. 2005. Vergil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self. Ann Arbor.
• Thomas, R.F. 2001. Virgil and the Augustan Reception. Cambridge.
• Torlone, Z.M. 2014. Vergil in Russia: National Identity and Classical Reception. Oxford.

The post Call for Papers: Identity in Vergil – Symposium Cumanum 2021 appeared first on The Vergilian Society.

Co-directors: Brittney Szempruch (United States Air Force Academy) and John F. Miller (University of Virginia) 

Although Vergil famously opens the Aeneid with a definitive statement of poetic intent—arma virumque cano—scholarship has long highlighted the poet’s propensity for the complication of firm generic boundaries. Amid a range of theoretical responses that have shaped the past nearly one hundred years (Kroll 1924; Cairns 1972; Fowler 1982; Conte 1986; Harrison 2007), the Vergilian corpus has emerged as some of the most productive ground for the in-depth study of generic flexibility (e.g. Nelis 2004; Seider 2016).

On its broadest level, this symposium aims to bring together scholars to discuss how the works of Vergil illuminate questions about genre and literary identity in the ancient world. In addition to looking at generic interplay in Vergil’s poetry, we seek to examine the role that genre has played in Vergil’s afterlife, both among his contemporaries and in later ages: how, particularly in relation to Vergil’s poems, did genre create or elide perceived boundaries and/or affiliations between authors inantiquity? What cultural implications did explicit or implicit generic interplay have? How has genre shaped not only our understanding of Vergil and what it meant to be an Augustan poet, but our reception (‘after’ in another sense) of the earlier genres with which he engaged? What do we gain and lose by putting Vergil at the forefront of this narrative?

Both textual studies and theoretical interventions are welcome. Papers might consider (but are not limited to) the following topics:

*Ÿ‘Greek’ vs. ‘Roman’ genres across Vergil’s poetry
Ÿ*Vergil’s reception of Hellenistic generic theory and experimentation
Ÿ*the presence of nonpoetic genres (scientific, philosophical, etc.) in the Vergilian corpus
*Ÿhymn, epigram, and tragedy in Vergil
Ÿ*elegy and Vergilian pastoral
Ÿ*‘didactic’ and heroic epic
Ÿ*the reception of Vergilian generic conventions
Ÿ*the centrality of (and/or bias toward) Vergil in discussions of genre in antiquity

Speakers will include Giancarlo Abbamonte (Naples–Federico II), Alessandro Barchiesi (NYU), Sergio Casali (Rome–Tor Vergata), Stephen Harrison (Oxford), Julia Hejduk (Baylor), Alison Keith (Toronto), Giuseppe La Bua (Rome–Sapienza), James O’Hara (UNC Chapel Hill), Vassiliki Panoussi (William & Mary), Stefano Rebeggiani (USC), Fabio Stok (Rome–Tor Vergata), and Adriana Vazquez (UCLA).

Papers will be 20 minutes long with ample time for discussion. Participants will arrive on June 23 followed by three full days of papers, discussion, and visits to Vergilian sites.

Interested scholars should send an abstract of no more than 300 words to vergilandgenre2020@gmail.com by December 1, 2019.

For inquiries and further information, contact the directors:Brittney Szempruch (brittney.szempruch@usafa.edu)

John Miller (jfm4j@virginia.edu)

Cited Works

Cairns, F. 1972. Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry. Edinburgh.
Conte, G. B. 1986. The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets. Cornell.
Fowler, A. 1982. Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Harvard.
Nelis, D. 2004. “From Didactic to Epic: Georgics2.458–3.48.” In Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre, Tradition and Individuality, ed. M. Gale. Swansea: 73-107.
Harrison, S. J. 2007. Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace. Oxford.
Kroll, W. 1924. “Die Kreuzung der Gattungen.” Studien zum Verständnis der römischen Literatur: 202–24.
Seider, A. M. 2016. “Genre, Gallus, and Goats: Expanding the Limits of Pastoral in Eclogues 6 and 10.” Vergilius62: 3–23.

The post CFP: Generic Interplay in and after Vergil appeared first on The Vergilian Society.