Convegno finale PRIN 2022 'Memory and Space in Classical Athens (and Beyond)'

‘Memory and Space in Classical Athens (and beyond)’

Final Conference of the PRIN Project MnemAth ‘Memory and Space in Classical Athens. Topography, Monuments, Mindscapes’ (PI Giorgia Proietti – University of Trento)

September 11, 9 AM - 7 PM

September 12, 9 AM - 5 PM

Ahead of the end of the project in late September 2025, the investigators of the PRIN 2022 ‘MnemAth’ – Memory and Space in Classical Athens. Topography, Monuments, and Mindscapes’ announce a two-day conference, which will take place at the Department of Humanities of the University of Trento, on September 11-12, 2025.

The project aims at investigating the formation, transmission, and transformations of historical memory in Classical Athens (ca. 490-322 BCE), as seen through space. Taking inspiration from the growing scholarly focus on the means and forms of social memory, the recent attention given to non-historiographical media of memory, and the paramount importance acknowledged to space as a framework for social memory, the project’s goal is a reconstruction of a stratigraphy of the Athenian spatial memory of historical events, from the Persian wars to the Lamian war.

The 2-day Trento conference (which is also part of a summer school) will focus on the entanglement between history, memory and space in Classical Athens, and beyond, both geographically, to embrace the whole Attica, and chronologically, up to the Roman era.

The conference will be held in presence only. The two keynote lectures (by Maurizio Giangiulio on day 1 and by Nino Luraghi on day 2) will be also available remotely via Zoom. The registration links can be found in the programme.

Programme

Conference day 1

Morning session (9.30-13)

Chair: Giorgia Proietti
9.30-10 Institutional greetings
             Introduction
10-10.30 Daniela Marchiandi (Torino): Come si costruisce uno mnemotopos: la storiografia locale e l'Amazzonomachia di Teseo tra Atene e la Bitinia
10.30-11 David Sierra (Madrid): Communities of memory on the Acropolis in the early classical period: the case of the korai and women's dedications

11-11.30 Coffee break

Chair: Emilio Rosamilia
11.30-12 Ellie Mackin Roberts (Bristol), Remembering and Forgetting on the Athenian Acropolis: Embodied Cognition and the Materiality of Cultural Memory
12-12.30 Ben Cassell (London): ‘All choose to die nobly’: Athenian Eponymoi, place attachment and the recollection of heroic violence
12.30-13 Constanze Graml (Trier), Political Crisis and Memory in the Ephebeia: Attica as a Space of Memory and Oblivion (online)

13-14.30 Lunch buffet

Afternoon session (14.30-17.30)

Chair: Emilio Rosamilia
14.30-15 Giorgia Proietti (Trento): L’agora all’epoca della ‘prima guerra del Peloponneso’: l’asse ateno-argivo e l’arco di Plistarco
15-15.30 Massimo Nafissi (Perugia): I Plateesi e l’agora di Atene
15.30-16 Michael Castellino (Trento): La performance tragica come mindscape: lo Ione euripideo, la memoria mitica, e gli spazi della città

16-16.30 Coffee break

Chair: Claudio Biagetti
16.30-17 Donatella Erdas (Milano): La stele della pace di Callia. Un fantasma epigrafico tra autenticità e memoria civica (online)
17-17.30 Silvia Negro (Atene): Memorie plurali e identità locali: i demi e la commemorazione delle guerre recenti
18-19 Keynote lecture: Maurizio Giangiulio (Trento): In Attica: spazi regionali, spazi della Città. Memoria, politica e pratiche civiche

Conference day 2

Morning session (9.30-13)

Chair: Giorgia Proietti
9.30-10 Antonio Iacoviello (Trento): Memorie contese e spazio civico: i ritratti dei generali nell'Agora di Atene (394–370 ca. a.C.)
10-10.30 Emilio Rosamilia (Perugia): Memoria, spazio, elementi marginali: le Tabulae curatorum navalium sull’agorà di Atene
10.30-11 Estelle Strazdins (Canberra): Herodes Atticus at Marathon. Memory and Space in Roman Attica (online)

11-11.30 Coffee break

12-13 Keynote lecture: Nino Luraghi (Oxford), The Grave of Thucydides at the Melitides Gates: Testing Periegetic Autopsy (online)

13-14.30 Lunch buffet

Afternoon session (14.30-17.30)

Chair: Emilio Rosamilia
14.30-15 Maria Chiara Monaco (Matera), L'Acropoli di Atene come war memorial. Dall'Atena Promachos al Foro di Augusto ed oltre
15-15.30 Carmelo Di Nicuolo (Atene): Una nuova città «πέραν τῆς ἀκτῆς». Munichia, l’altare di Afrodite e il santuario di Zeus Soter e Atena Soteira (online)

15.30-16 Coffee break

Chair: Claudio Biagetti
16-16.30 Francesco Camia (Roma), IG II/III 2 1035 e la memoria culturale di Atene
16.30-17 Gabriella Rubulotta (Messina), Spazio e memoria nella retorica dell’elogio di città
17-17.30 Conclusions and discussion

Scientific responsibility and organization: Giorgia Proietti (giorgia.proietti@unitn.it), with the collaboration of Emilio Rosamilia (emilio.rosamilia@unipg.it)