You may be interested in the Shifting Frontiers XV conference scheduled for 21–24 September of this year at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
You will find more information at https://shiftingfrontiersxv.history.ucsb.edu/.
The deadline for submitting paper or panel ideas is 21 March.
The International Conference on the Philosophy of Early Christianity in the Era of Digitalization in 2019
Theme: The Philosophy of Early Christianity in the Era of Digitalization
Conference Date: 6th-7th Dec 2019
Conference Venue: Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City
Organizer: The Department of Philosophy, Fu Jen Catholic University
Co-Organizer: Fu Jen Academia Catholica
Keynote Speakers:
Bernard Li, Emeritus Professor of Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan
Christoph Horn, Professor of Bonn University, Germany
Mark Edwards, Professor of Oxford University, England
Igor Palvovich Ryazantsev, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Professor of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Russia
Tran Van Doan, Emeritus Professor of National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Yee Tet Lim, Biblical Scholar, Malaysia
Call for Papers
Submission Deadline: 2th Nov. 2019
Details:
Please send an abstract of maximum 500 words (in Word format and prepared for blind review) for a paper suitable for a 30-munite slot (20 minutes for a paper, 10 minutes for questions and answers) to joannaloh29@gmail.com with the subject heading “Submission to The Philosophy of Early Christianity in the Era of Digitalization”. Papers should be no longer than 5,000 words and include the abstract. Please include author’s information, including paper title and abstract, in the email. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 4th Nov., 2019.
The philosophy of early Christianity plays a very important role not only for the advancement of the Christian Church, but also for the philosophical development of Christian theology. It is known that Plato has been regarded as a Christian by some early apologists, such as Justin Martyr, which shows that the Christian faith has nourished the development of western philosophy. They are in nuce interdependent.
Platonic and generally ancient Greek philosophy weighed heavily on Origen, for example, who was not only the greatest theological luminary of his age, but also the head teacher at the Catechetical School of New Converts (founded by Mark, the apostle) in Alexandria, and was a Plotinic Christian. His On First Principles, which was translated into Latin by Rufinus, includes the concepts of the pre-existence of the soul and of emanation, which have been further developed by the Neo-Platonist, Plotinus. That is, if we don’t possess early Christian philosophy, our understanding of Plotinus is not able to reveal the whole picture, and perchance we misinterpret Plotinian theory. Additionally, Plotinus’ philosophy was also absorbed by St. Augustine. Hence, from this evidence alone the philosophy of early Christianity is crucial to understanding the whole picture of the development of Christianity and to keeping the Christian faith and tradition.
Early Christianity has been widely neglected in Taiwanese academia, albeit deeply rooted in the western academic sphere. So this is the mission that a Taiwanese Christian university has to carry out in the spirit of Christ, under the potential threat of the age of digitalization: to re-build the Christian faith by means of the medium of digitalisation.
The impact of digitalization upon economy, culture and politics is unfathomable, and has not only changed our lifestyle, but also our way of thinking. People who are not able to keep up with the trend of digitalization will encounter a lot of troubles, though Patriarch Kirill, Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, warns of the potential danger of the smartphone.
The advantages of the church online are great, for example, a house-bound patient who can listen to services, sermons and hymns at home, but the disadvantages cannot be ignored, for example, the potential dangers of internet chatrooms may cause some believers to be cheated. If we neglect the manipulation by digitalization on peoples’ behaviour, it is possible that the e-church will replace the real church, and that people will simply not go to church to worship God, but stay at home, singing hymns alone. Furthermore, social media, like Instagram, is arguably passively encouraging young people to commit suicide, which has happened in the UK to the shocking extent of more than 200 cases, according to the BBC; so that the impact of digitalization in the Church could play an important role. How can the church help believers recover traditional values from Christianity? It is an issue we are concerned with very much today.
The conference is invited to inquire into the following questions:
1. The influence of digitalization on society
2. The impact of digitalization on Christianity in society
3. The digitalization of society as a way to transhumanism
4. Christian theological views and philosophical insights on digitalization and virtualization in a society
5. The application of the interpretation of early Christianity to digitalization
6. The philosophy of early Christianity
7. Ancient Greek philosophy in early Christian theology
8. From Platonic theology to St. Augustine’s theology
9. Ancient Greek philosophy in modern society
For more information, please visit: https://philevents.org/event/show/75470 and http://philosophy.ourpower.com.tw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=707:call-for-paper-the-philosophy-of-early-christianity-in-the-era-of-digitalization-2019&catid=91&Itemid=140.
The thirteenth annual conference of Asia-Pacific Early Christian Studies Society will be held in Singapore from 10–12 September 2020. The theme is ‘Pluralistic Contexts in Early Christianity’.
A 150-word abstract should be sent by 30 April 2020 to Rev Dr Leonard Wee (leonard@ttc.edu.sg) and Dr Geoffrey D. Dunn (gdd62au@hotmail.com) as an attachment.
Details are in the attached announcement.
The Institute of Classical, Mediterranean and Oriental Studies (Section of Ancient Near East and Biblical Tradition) of the University of Wrocław invites proposals for the VII International Biblical Conference, to take place 21-22 May 2020.
You are requested kindly to send abstracts (up to 200 words) in one of the congress languages or in Polish by 31 March 2020, to the following address: mjozwiak.uni.wr@gmail.com. For more information, please see the attached announcement.
The Pontificium Institutum Altioris Latinitatis (Faculty of Christian and Classical Literature) of the Salesian Pontifical University is organizing an international conference (on 27th March 2020) to reflect on the figure and the role of “father” in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Early Christianity. The deadline for proposals is 31 October 2019.
Updates on the conference can be found on the following website: https://flcc.unisal.it/index.php/it/covegni-2/covegni-2020.
Please see the attached CfP announcement for more information.
Power and Legitimacy in Rome and Byzantium: An Interdisciplinary Workshop
3 August 2019
The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Abstracts of 250 words due by 19 July 2019 to r.strickler@uq.edu.au.
The fields of Roman and Byzantine studies have developed as largely separate fields. Historians and classicists have typically treated Rome and Byzantium as two distinct empires, and rarely do the two fields intersect. Nevertheless, the subjects of study for both fields, from the early Republic to the last years of the Palaiologan Dynasty considered themselves to be first and foremost Romans, part of a polity stretching back to the mythical age of kings, and their leaders considered themselves to be the successors of emperors dating back to Augustus and relied on similar methods to secure their legitimacy. Whether gaining the support of the military, employing popular religion, using numismatic iconography and statuary, or employing rhetoric and panegyric, the tools used by Roman and Byzantine leaders to acquire and maintain authority changed very little in form over time.
This workshop seeks to bring together established scholars and students of any field examining the topics of Roman and Byzantine legitimacy, broadly conceived, to share ideas and promote cooperation.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to: The use of imperial cult, church and state relations, relationship between the emperor and the military, the emperor and the people, imperial ritual, coinage, statuary and monuments, identity, succession and usurpation, social networking, rhetoric, panegyric and propaganda, etc.
Registration Fees:
$A 40 – Waged participants
$A 20 – Unwaged
Free for Students
Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors a limited number of competitive stipends are available to defray travel expenses for postgraduates travelling from outside of Queensland or Australia to present papers.
Postgraduate attendees are invited to participate in a special session with the keynote speakers. Selected postgraduate students will be provided with pre-circulated papers and invited to prepare questions in advance for the speakers. Spaces are limited. Postgraduates may participate in the session even if they are not presenting.
Questions and Abstracts of 250 words or less should be sent to r.strickler@uq.edu.au by 19 July 2019. Abstracts should include email and affiliation. Postgraduates whether they wish to participate in the masterclass, and whether they wish to be considered for a stipend (please include a CV if so).
Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Gwynaeth McIntyre (University of Otago), “All in the Family: Legitimisation and the coins of Caligula”
Prof. David Olster (University of Kentucky), “The Something or Other that Occurred in the Trullan Hall in 691-692: The Legitimacy of the So-Called ‘Quintisext Council’”
Prof. Bronwen Neil (Macquarie University), “Byzantine Leadership in an Age of Crisis (500-750 CE): Managing the Impending Apocalypse”
Call For Papers: The Citizen in Late Antiquity
University of Utrecht, 25th November 2019
The Postgraduate and Early Career Late Antiquity Network
‘Citizen’ in Late Antiquity was an emotive and complex term. In the classical world, the term not only signified the distribution of rights and duties of members of city and empire, but perhaps much more importantly reflected the intricate processes of inclusion and exclusion that shaped Greco-Roman culture in a myriad of ways. Conventional historiography, which tended to focus on legal citizenship almost exclusively, once characterized citizenship as defunct by the onset of Late Antiquity: it has argued that the mass enfranchisement of the edict of Caracalla and the gradual transformation – or collapse – of the classical city, turned the ‘citizen’ into an anachronism, with its social, cultural and political significance returning only at the onset of the Renaissance. Recent scholarship however has started to contest this view by positing that neither the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west nor the transformation of the classical city brought an end to the concept of the citizen.
Next to other forms of self-identification, such as gender, class and ethnicity, people in late Roman and post-Roman polities continued to imagine and conduct themselves as citizens and these categories could themselves be understood in terms of legal and social citizenship. The citizen was also omnipresent in religious discourses, most significantly in late antique Christianity where the followers of Christ could either be perceived as citizens par excellence (viz. of the civitas Dei) or as intrinsic strangers and outsiders, namely to the civitas of the transitory world. Furthermore, citizens, of whatever kind, were also represented in material and visual culture, they took part, as citizens, in economic and artistic life and they appear most frequently in a vast number of textual sources and genres. An understanding of the full spectrum of ‘citizenship’ and ‘the citizen’ in Late Antiquity thus requires the use of a wide range of sources and approaches, and the fresh insights of a new generation of scholars.
This workshop, The Citizen in Late Antiquity, aims at providing an informal, constructive environment for post-graduate and early career researchers to present their work, meet others working in the field, and discuss current trends and issues. The Late Antiquity Network provides a single platform for those working on a broad range of geographical and disciplinary areas within the period of Late Antiquity, and participants are thus encouraged to interpret ‘citizen’ in a broad sense, thinking about how the theme intersects with their own research. Papers will be of twenty minutes, with ten minutes allocated for discussion. Facilitating this will be an address by our visiting speaker, Professor Engin Isin of Queen Mary University London, an acclaimed and prolific theorist on the subject of citizenship. The workshop is generously supported and hosted by the Dutch NWO VICI research project “Citizenship Discourses in the Early Middle Ages” and the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies (UCMS) at Utrecht University. Some suggested topics for discussion are:
– Different types of citizens
– Citizens and material culture and imagery
– Citizens and non-citizens, and interactions between different kinds of citizenship
– The spatial dimensions of citizenship
– Citizens, universalism and cosmopolitanism
– Criteria for becoming or ceasing to be a citizen
– Alternatives to citizenship discourse
– Citizens and the city
– Citizens and religion
– Poverty and citizenship
– Citizens in different literary genres
– Citizens and lawmaking
Abstracts of no more than 400 words with a brief biography to be sent to the conveners Thomas Langley (trl36@cam.ac.uk) and Kay Boers (K.Boers@uu.nl) by Friday 26th July. Please include your affiliation (independent scholars welcome) and current academic status (or the year your PhD was awarded). If interested in the opportunity to run the seminar next year, please detail any relevant previous experience alongside the biography when you submit the abstract. Successful applicants will be notified by Monday 19th August.
The LARNA project (Lived Ancient Religion in North Africa), based at the Institute of Historiography ‘Julio Caro Baroja’ (University Carlos III of Madrid) and funded the Autonomous Community of Madrid, invites researchers of ancient history, history of religion, archaeology, anthropology, classical studies, and further related fields to discuss the topic of “Lived Ancient Religion in North Africa”. The conference will be held at University Carlos III of Madrid, from 19-21 February 2020.
Proposals including a title and an abstract of 300-500 words should be sent to María Fernández Portaencasa (fportaen@hum.uc3m.es) by 30 June 2019. We accept papers in English and French language. All costs of travel (up to 200 euros), food, and accommodation (2 nights) will be covered by the organisation. Please see the attached PDF for more details.
CfP LARNA ENG
At the initiative of a Lebanese journalist, Kinda Marie Elias, Prof. Marek Cieslik (Dean of the Faculté des Sciences Religieuses, Université Saint-Joseph, Beirut), Prof. Michel Fédou sj (Centre Sèvres – Facultés jésuites de Paris) and Prof. Lorenzo Perrone (Alma Mater Studiorum – Universita di Bologna) are organizing a symposium on Origen in Lebanon.
The general theme is: « Origen in Lebanon. The Interpretation of the Foundational Texts: A Challenge for the Inter-religious Dialogue ».
The symposium will take place in Beirut at the Faculté des Sciences Religieuses of the Université St.-Joseph on the 23rd-24th of March 2020. On the 25th there will be an excursion to Tyre to lay a commemorative plaque of Origen and the participation to the interreligious festival of the Annonciation, which is celebrated in Lebanon both by Christians and Muslims.
A call for proposals is attached. Younger scholars are especially encouraged to apply (twenty-five grants will be awarded). The deadline for proposals is the 31st of August 2019. Please see the attached PDF for more details.
Origen_in_Lebanon_EN
The 3rd International Patristic Conference in Lublin, on the theme ‘The Bible in the Patristic Time: Translations and Spiritual Interpretation in the 1600th Anniversary of the Death of St. Jerome,’ will take place on October 16–18, 2019, at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.
Applications with the subject and abstract (max 2000 characters) should be sent to patristic@kul.pl by June 30, 2019. Please see the attached document for more details.
Lublin_Conference_2019