Call for papers

XXV Finnish Symposium on Late Antiquity:
SEAFARING, MOBILITY AND THE MEDITERRANEAN IN LATE ANTIQUITY (CA. 150-700 CE)
Tvärminne, Finland, 26.-27.10.2018

The 25th multidisciplinary Finnish Symposium on Late Antiquity will be organized on 26-27 October 2018. The symposium will bring together scholars and postgraduate students with an interest in Late Antiquity from a variety of universities and disciplines (philology, archaeology, history, theology, religious studies, art history etc.). The theme of this year’s symposium is Seafaring, Mobility, and the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity (ca. 150-700 CE), which will be approached from a wide perspective, including social, economic, cultural, religious, ideological, and literary aspects; the symposium will be divided into thematic sessions broadly structured around archaeological, literary, and historical frames of inquiry.

We welcome papers discussing Late Antique seafaring, mobility, and the Mediterranean from any viewpoints, but encourage especially the following themes:
1.      Networks of Communication and Commodification in the Late Antique Mediterranean
2.      Sea as a Metaphor in Late Ancient Literature
3.      The Mediterranean as ‘Mare Nostrum’

Please send a short abstract of 250–300 words words, with your name, affiliation, e-mail and paper title, by 7th of May 2018 to Dr Ville Vuolanto: ville.vuolanto(at)uta.fi. Applicants will be informed by the beginning of June 2018 at the latest whether they have been accepted. We have reserved 20 minutes for each presentation, plus 10 minutes for discussion.

The symposium will be organized at the zoological research station of the University of Helsinki at Tvärminne, on the southern coast of Finland (http://luoto.tvarminne.helsinki.fi/english) – a suitably maritime venue. The symposium will have a participation fee (20€ from students, 60€ from others), which will include accommodation (one night) at the symposium venue, as well as meals for two days. We offer also the transportation from Helsinki to Tvärminne and the return journey. Registration for the symposium will start on 20 August and will close on 28 September 2018.

There are three invited keynote lectures in the symposium:

Professor Greg Woolf, director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London:
Changes in Traffic Volume across Mediterranean Maritime Networks in the first millennium CE.

Professor Rebecca Sweetman, University of St Andrews
Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Communication, Complexity and Christianization in the Aegean

Professor Arja Karivieri, director of the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, Rome
The Ways to Control Mobility in Ostia and Portus

The symposium is organized by Raimo Hakola (raimo.hakola@helsinki.fi), Antti Lampinen (antti.lampinen@helsinki.fi) and Ville Vuolanto (ville.vuolanto@staff.uta.fi) and funded by the following research projects: Reason and Religious Recognition (The Academy of Finland's Centre of Excellence, Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki; headed by Risto Saarinen); Segregated or Integrated? – Living and Dying in the Harbour City of Ostia, 300 BCE – 700 CE (The Academy of Finland research project, University of Tampere; headed by Arja Karivieri); Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition (European Research Council, Consolidator Grant, Kaius Tuori).

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On behalf of the organizing committee,

Ville Vuolanto

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Ville Vuolanto
PhD, Lecturer in History
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Tampere, Finland
http://www.uta.fi/yky/en/contact/personnel/villevuolanto/index.html