In the past three decades, haunting has exploded as a critical trope across the humanities. From Jacques Derrida’s “hauntology” to Gayatri Spivak’s “ghostwriting” to Christina Sharpe’s “wake work,” the role of the dead in living communities has become a topic of widespread interest across disciplinary boundaries. Along different lines, classicists have become increasingly interested in the relationship between the living and the dead in the ancient Mediterranean. This workshop aims to bridge these conversations, linking a historical concern with the ancient dead with broader questions about the ethical and political stakes of haunting. This means asking not only what it meant to be haunted in antiquity, but also what it means to be haunted by antiquity. In light of Avery Gordon’s suggestion that haunting is a “constituent element of modern social life”, we hope to pursue antiquity’s ghosts across presence and absence, life and death, now and then.
The workshop will take place on Princeton’s campus over the course of two days. It will consist of three panels, each of which will engage one of the three dimensions described above: the “local,” the “global,” and the “planetary.” Each panel will include three to four speakers, roughly half of whom will be invited faculty and half of whom will be selected by this open call, making for a total of ten invitees. Each participant will have the opportunity to 1. give a paper and 2. respond to another participant’s paper, in the hope of facilitating generative exchanges.
Co-organizers: Paul Eberwine, Aditi Rao
Friday, April 12, 2024
9:30 am - 4:30 pm
A71 Louis A. Simpson Building
Saturday, April 13, 2024
9:30 am - 3:00 pm
301 Laura Wooten Hall
Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, Department of Comparative Literature, Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities, Humanities Council, Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies (with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund), the University Center for Human Values, and the Graduate School.