This page lists our special events. Please also consult the listings for our regular CRAM and Graduate Forum meetings in the page menu.

Topographies of pre-Modern Dance—Comparative Perspectives

A PEC-supported conference, with funding from the Chester V. Starr Faculty Lectureships Fund

5-6 May 2023

Felipe Rojas (JIAAW and E&A); Sarah Olson (Classics, Williams College)
A workshop bringing together literary historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists to explore topographies of dance and related kinesthetic practices in two distinct cultural environments: the Greek and Roman Mediterranean and the colonial Americas. We seek to explore such questions as: Why did people dance where they did? How did the places where they danced impact or inform their movements? How did performers, in turn, transform places by dancing? What did place add to performance and vice-versa? How did the performance of dance engage with mythic and imaginary spaces? The study of ancient dance has been dynamized by cross-pollination with theoretical discourses on contemporary performance studies. The organizers, both trained as classicists, are convinced that it can also be enlivened by engaging in dialogue among specialists working in traditions which, though temporally, geographically, and culturally diverse, considered kinesthetic performance of central cultural importance. This workshop thus engages with the ongoing critical attention to site-specific and place-based work in dance and performance studies, as well as the burgeoning interest in comparative and cross-cultural analysis in ancient and pre-modern studies.

Environmental Archaeology in the Anthropocene

A PEC speaker series organised by Amanda Gaggioli (JIAAW) and R. Sandy Hunter (Anthropology), with funding from the Chester V. Starr Faculty Lectureships Fund

Lecture 1: Local Ecological Knowledge and Imperial Demands in Agricultural Practice

John M. Marston, Boston University

February 24, 2023, 4:00-6:30pm, RI Hall 108



Lecture 2: Haunted Landscapes: The Archeology of Slow Violence and Slow Activism

Haeden E. Stewart, UMass Amherst

Tuesday, March 14th, 4:00-6:30 pm, Urban Environment Laboratory 106

Lecture 3: Beyond 'Lessons from the Past': Mobilizing Archaeology to Improve Climate Models

Kathleen Morrison

April 25, 2023, 4:00-6:30pm, RI Hall 108

Disability in Antiquity: A Panel Discussion on Normativity and Variance in the Premodern World

Part of the PEC Workshop series, with funding from the Chester V. Starr Faculty Lectureships Fund

Panelists: Saul Olyan (Religious Studies, Brown University), Joel Christensen (Classical  Studies, Brandeis University), Cicek Beeby (JIAAW, Brown University)
March 8th, 2023, 5:45-7:00 pm, RI Hall 108

Deep Displacement:  Excavating the History of Migration and Settlement
Friday, October 7th, 9:30 am - 5 pm
Peterutti Lounge, Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center

A Workshop at Brown University

Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Humanities Initiative Programming Fund, and the Program in Early Cultures via the Chester V. Starr Faculty Lectureships Fund

Featuring

Anna Agbe-Davies (UNC Chapel Hill)
Yannis Hamilakis (Brown)
Michelle Lelievre (William and Mary)
Yoli Ngandali (University of Washington)
Matthew Reilly (City College)
Melissa Rosenzweig (Northwestern)
Mudit Trivedi (Stanford)
Parker VanValkenburgh (Brown)
Terence Weik (University of South Carolina)

SCHEDULE

9:30 am - 10:45 am -           Settlement and Subjectivity in Assyria and South Asia
10:45 am - 12:00 pm -         Settlement and Racial Dialectics in the Colonial Americas
1:30 pm - 2:45 pm -             Black Migration and Mobility in the Atlantic and the United States
2:45 pm - 4:00 pm -             Mobility and Resilience in Native North America
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm -             Commentary and Discussion

Writing Global Histories Today, September 16 – September 17, 2022

A conference co-sponsored by PEC and the Cogut Institute, with funding from the Chester V. Starr Faculty Lectureships Fund

This two-day symposium brings together an international cohort of scholars to discuss the challenges of writing global histories today, including the epistemological difficulties of analogic and comparative thinking and the political implications of such histories for the present and future of global societies. What are the stakes of writing global histories today? Who should write global histories? And how?

Future events

Epigraphic Inscription in Tang-Song China

Jeffrey Moser (History of Art and Architecture)

This workshop will focus on new approaches to the interpretation of stone inscriptions in ninth to eleventh century China. This was a period that witnessed both the emergence of the Chinese discipline of epigraphy (jinshixue)—the systematic collection, preservation, and study of earlier stone inscriptions—and the development of a number of new kinds of inscriptive  practice, including the widespread practice of re-inscribing old inscriptions. The workshop will explore the relationships among these complex, entangled practices of interpreting old inscriptions and making new ones.