The University of Liverpool
School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology
12-14 Abercromby Square
GB-Liverpool L69 7WZ

2006/07, Semester 1
Tuesday, 16.30
Venue: 12 Abercromby Square (Ground Floor), Bosanquet Seminar Room (G13)

Diasporas and Identities in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Mission Statement

In a globalizing, shrinking world where migration is ubiquitous, the humanities have rediscovered diaspora as a topic of prime interest. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of emerging new diaspora groups: immigrants’ communties in the developed world, ethnically, culturally and religiously distinct from their environments and linked by modern means of communication and transport. In contrast to this post-colonial dimension of diaspora, diaspora in pre-modern societies still lacks systematic study. This is particularly true for Classical Antiquity, the period that gave birth to the archetype of al historic diasporas: Judaism. The seminar addresses diasporas of various kinds throughout Antiquity as hotbeds for processes of ethnogenesis and the construction of new cultural identities. In diasporic hotspots (such as Naukratis and Dura-Europos), where people with wide-ranging cultural backgrounds lived literally next door to each other, ‘otherness’ – the chief catalyst for identity – inevitably became an item on the agenda. How did diaspora influence the specific ways in which identity was constructed? To what degree could diasporic groups forming networks stay in contact with each other? And how did diasporas come into being, some even without migration?

26 September
Ian C. Rutherford (University of Reading):
Becoming Greek Through Theoria: Religious Networks and Imagined Diasporas in Ancient Greece

10 October
Astrid Möller (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau):
“A Tender Plant Growing in an Uncongenial Soil” – Naukratis and the Growth of Greek Identity

17 October
Ted Kaizer (University of Durham):
Palmyrenes in the Diaspora

24 October
Gerhard Langer (Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg):
The Wandering Jew: Judaism as a Paradigm for Globalization

7 November
Graham Oliver (University of Liverpool):
In Search of the Phoenicians. Identifying Foreigners in the Eastern Mediterranean

14 November
Robert Rollinger (Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck):
tbc

21 November
Fergus Millar (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford):
tbc

28 November
Alessandra Bravi (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg):
The Power of Images in the Jewish Realm: Conventions and Transgressions

12 December
Christy Constantakopoulou (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Aegean History and Aegean Networks