Materia III: New Approaches to Material Text in the Ancient World

This article appeared in ISAW Newsletter 23, Winter 2019. For both up-to-date and retrospective information on public conferences, lectures, and other activities, please consult the Events section of our website.

Burning of tablets in Hadrianic debt relief, detail of the Anaglypha Traiani Conference organized by Joseph Howley (Columbia University), Stephanie Frampton (MIT), David M. Ratzan (ISAW)
April 5, 9:00am

The MATERIA Conference is a series of colloquia dedicated to presenting new research on books and other media in antiquity, bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines—history, literature, epigraphy, papyrology, archeology, manuscript studies, etc. The first two MATERIA meetings, held in 2016 (Columbia University) and 2017 (MIT), pursued a more traditional focus on the book and the literary in order to advance a broader understanding of the history of the book in the Roman world. With MATERIA III at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, we extend this discussion to consider approaches to material text in Greco-Roman antiquity and other ancient civilizations between 500 BCE and 500 CE in terms of, but also beyond, the category of “the book.” We will explore a variety of objects ancient readers and users would have encountered that looked like books, but weren’t, as well as practices related to reading and writing outside of books per se. Speakers will draw from evidence across the methodological spectrum of ancient studies and related fields to explore the wider world of literate activity, not by way of “literacy” or “the literary,” but by way of practice, technology, and ideology. The aim is to foster discussion between scholars who work on disparate aspects of ancient material text, reading and writing, in different cultural traditions and who are interested in sharing their expertise with others who approach the topic from different perspectives.

The conference is co-sponsored by ISAW, Columbia University Faculty of Arts & Sciences Lenfest Junior Faculty Development Fund, and NYU Classics. RSVP required at isaw.nyu.edu/rsvp.