Classics was well-represented at this year's Inquiry @ ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ conference, held at the Queen''s Learning Commons in Stauffer Library on March 8th and 9th. Three of our concentrators presented papers:
1) Classics Major Raphaelle Walsh-Beauchamp (Faculty Supporter: Dr. Cristiana Zaccagnino) participated in Session V: Power and Resistance (Moderator: Jacqueline Davies, Philosophy) with a talk entitled
Classical Reception Among the Women of the Eighteenth-Century Bluestocking Society
Eighteenth-century Britain saw a rich period of classical reception and allusions to antiquity in its literature, art, and politics. Among those who were influenced by the ancient Greek and Roman cultures were the members of the Bluestocking Society. Comprising mainly of authors, artists, and politicians of the elite class, it is its female members who have gained the most prominence in the subsequent study of the Society. While its most famous female members have been extensively studied through feminist, political, and literary lenses this work seeks to examine the classical influences upon the group. This paper will examine a mixture of contemporary literary works, paintings, engravings, and commissioned architecture, analyzing the classical allusions within these works and how these were used by the Bluestocking women to propagate their social standing. Additionally, the education of the Bluestocking women will be examined to see how certain women of the eighteenth-century made use of informal systems of learning to become as affluent in classical scholarship as their male counterparts. The Bluestocking women were able to use this informal education to become celebrated scholars. Major works analyzed within the paper include the personal letters of the leader of the Bluestockings Elizabeth Montagu, Sarah Fielding’s The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia (1757), Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo (1778) by artist Richard Samuel, and representations of historian Catharine Macaulay as a Roman figure.
2) Classics Major Jacob Robert (Faculty Supporter: Dr. Fabio Colivicchi) participated in Session VIII: New Frontiers (Moderator: Morag Coyne, Engineering & Science Library) with a talk entitled
Underwater Surveys in Northern Menorca: Material Assemblages and Shipwrecks
A plethora of archaeology currently resides unfound at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Artifacts and material assemblages distributed throughout this sea serve as preserved time-capsules, representing a relatively underrepresented source of historical and archaeological analysis. This paper analyzes shipwrecks of the Balearic Sea along Menorca’s coastline to foreground the role that archaeology plays in reconstructing historical trade routes and ancient climatic during the late Roman period (4th – 7 th CE). Implementation of this research occurred in the summer of 2016, using methodologies of underwater survey to investigate Menorcan shelf bathymetry and material evidence. Position fixing and visual search techniques formed the bulk of methodological fieldwork, principally completed underwater through scuba diving. Complementing this study and its framework is the use of materiality from the adjoining Roman sites of Sanisera and Port de Sanitja. Pairing material analysis of unearthed amphorae with geospatial study allows for a partial recreation of ancient maritime climates and sea conditions, as well as macroeconomic scenarios of Menorcan late antiquity. Such an investigation opens up untouched and unobserved histories.
3) Classics Minor Henry Jeong (Faculty Supporters: Dr. Ana Siljak, History; Dr. Vassili Schedrin, History and Jewish Studies) participated in Session IV: Diversity, Inclusion, Complexity (Moderator: Cory Laverty, Teaching & Learning Specialist, Centre for Teaching & Learning) with a talk entitled
The Allegiance of Vladislav Felitisianovich: The Jewishness of Khodasevich’s Nekropol understanding his views towards Russian Emigre literature
The purpose of this presentation is to examine how Vladislav Khodasevich establishes his cosmopolitan position on the future of Russian Emigre literature in his final work Nekropol (1939). I aim to focus particularly on how his internal display of Jewishness in Nekropol serves as a critical mode to understand his cosmopolitan views towards art creation. Khodasevich, in his homage to his closest literary companions Samuil Kissin (Muni) and Mikhail Gershenzon, firmly demonstrates how Khodasevich’s cosmopolitan, rigorous views towards art creation were established through his Inorodtsy as a Polish Jew in Moscow, the use of Muni’s tragic death as a form of art creation through his use of trauma, and his tribute to universallyloved Gershenzon in instiling Khodasevich the necessity of artistic philosophies and public involvement in literary survival. With the combination of the factors above, Khodasevich’s views on artistic creation are completed during his emigre years, having his positive, rigorous approach to the future of Russian Emigre literature beyond its Oblomovism-like state during 1930s France. By allowing his readers an under-thedepth understanding of factors that developed Khodasevich’s cosmopolitan stances in Nekropol, Khodasevich’s tribute demonstrates the importance of linking the world of historical fields within Slavic studies, allowing a multidimensional understanding of both Jewish history and Russian literature in both Silver Age and under emigration.