Date:         Sun, 7 Jan 1996 16:39:27 -600
From:         harrison@LCAC1.LORAS.EDU
Subject:      APA late antique panel

The following is a call for papers for a panel, sponsored by 
the Colloquiumon Late Antiquity, at the next annual 
meeting of the AmericanPhilological Association in New 
York City, Dec. 28-30, 1996.  We expect to compile a 
roster of four, twenty-minute, papers and, to the extent that 
itis possible, hope to have a balanced program in terms of 
disciplinary focus and regional coverage.  Please note that 
the deadline is February 1.(I [GH] apologize for the 
lateness of this notice.)

CEREMONY AND SPECTACLE IN LATE ANTIQUITY
Michael Roberts, Wesleyan University; 
Geoffrey Harrison, Loras College

        For some time now scholars have drawn attention to 
the omnipresence and central importance of ceremony in 
the late Roman world. Carefully staged, visually impressive 
spectacles served to communicate the status or ideology of 
the powerful, both in public and private life, and to enact 
civic consensus or religious community.  Ceremonies might 
take place in churches, city streets and public spaces, 
theatres, arenas, imperial palaces or private villas, saints' 
shrines or the senate house; the occasions might be public 
games and shows, state celebrations, whether regularly 
occurring or intermittent, church festivals and holy days, 
banquets, weddings and funerals.  Such celebrations are 
distinguished from everyday circumstances of time and 
place by the careful elaboration of setting and by the 
orchestration of gesture, movement and the spoken word.  
They have their own conventions of representation and 
presuppose corresponding modes of perception in the 
viewer/hearer/participant.  The purpose of this session will 
be to explore late antique ceremonial as a particularly 
revealing means of access to various aspects of the late 
Roman world: mental, material, and socio-political.        

Papers may cover a range of topics (not mutually 
exclusive): for instance, examination of particular 
ceremonies through textual and/or visual materials; 
representations of ceremony in art and literature; the role 
played by topography, architecture, material objects or the 
spoken word; the staging of ceremony, i.e., the significance 
of gesture, dress, movement, and setting; modes of 
representation and perception, and the function of 
ceremony.  Our intention is to bring together scholars from 
a range of subdisciplines and we invite submissions from 
specialists in the visual arts and material culture and from 
those working with textual evidence, whether religious or 
secular, Eastern or Western, literary or documentary.        

All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously and should be 
postmarked no later than February 1, 1996.  Persons 
submitting abstracts should be APA members in good 
standing at the time of submission.  Please send three 
anonymous copies of your abstract, which should be from 
500 to800 words in length, and on a separate sheet your 
name and address to either 

Professor Geoffrey Harrison, 
Loras College, 
Box 103, Dubuque, IA52001, 
FAX 319-588-7292 (telephone: 319-588-7952; 
e-mail:harrison@lcac1.loras.edu), 

or to 

Professor Michael Roberts, 
Dept. of
Classical Studies, 
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06459-0146; 
FAX201-685-2001 (telephone 203-685-2068; 
e-mail: mroberts@wesleyan.edu).