Educating the Future Generation: Teaching, Learning and Antiquity

A postgraduate conference at University College London,

Greek and Latin Department, Gordon House 106.

13–14 September 2012

Supported by the Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies, Classical Association and the Institute of Classical Studies.

This postgraduate-run, interdisciplinary conference will look at the role of education in antiquity. The transmission of values, knowledge, and skills is inherent in every culture throughout antiquity. The Greco-Roman world, in particular, dealt with this issue from very early on, developing different answers in different forms (e.g. asserting educational values in great epic poetry, theoretical discussions on pedagogic principles, the creation of a didactic genre, and the composition of hand-book and school-book texts). A variety of authors and texts (from Homer to Vergil, from Aristotle to Horace) engaged in and responded to the challenge of educating future generations. Theoretical discussions, as Quintilian attests, and practical works (such as the various Artes Grammaticae or Seneca Rhetor’s Declamationes) were composed especially to meet educational demands. Indeed, the concept of paideia and the institutions of Greco-Roman education often influenced and shaped the reception of ancient texts, contributing to the selection of the works we still read today: in other words, ancient education also played an important part in the training of the Western cultural élite from at least the age of the Renaissance.

This conference aims to explore different aspects of teaching and learning in the Greco-Roman world and to examine the multiple strategies practised in the education of future generations. The conference also hopes to analyse how education shaped the reception of classical texts in Antiquity and beyond, and how the ancient notions and practices of education were understood, portrayed, and received in post-Classical eras.

Thursday 13 September

9.30- 10.30: Registration and welcome.

PANEL 1: Grammarians

10.30-12.00

Julie Damaggio (Lyon 2): Beginning of teaching grammar in Ancient Rome

Jason O’Rorke (NUIG): Coming to terms with Priscian: the instruction of advanced grammatical terminology in the Institutiones Grammaticae.

Anna Zago (SNS): Quasi coram discipulis: Pompeius comments Donatus

PANEL 2: Commentaries

12.00-1.30

Antony Makrinos (UCL): Paraphrases and Homeric education in Byzantium: in search of Demosthenes Thrax.

Giulieta Cardigni (Buenos Aires): Didactic Features and Roman Identity in Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis”

Frances Foster (KCL): Educating the Elite in Late Antiquity 

 

1.30-2.30 LUNCH

PANEL 3: Papyri and the reconstruction of teaching practices

2.30-4.00

Valentina Millozzi (Urbino): ‘A teacher’s hand-book from the Hellenistic Egypt (P.Cairo JE 62422): pedagogy and teaching practise.’

Maria Chiara Scappaticcio (Liége): ‘Fragmentary artes grammaticae – Latin grammatical texts on papyrus and the teaching of the language: towards a corpus’

Mark Winfield (KCL): ‘A business education in Ptolemaic Egypt or there is no Harvard on the Nile’

4.00-4.30 BREAK

Keynote Lecture:

4.30-6.00  Professor Eleanor Dickey

‘Naked from the knees up: what the colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana tell us (and do not tell us) about language learning in antiquity’

 

Friday 14 September

Panel 4: Reception of classical education

9.30-11.00

Erica Baricci (Siena): ‘Reshit haLeqach or “the Hebrew Donatus”: Jewish reception of the Latin grammar manual’

Sabrina Colabella (Roma Tre): ‘Homo sum – About teaching Latin and Ancient Greek in upper school’

Marco Ricucci (Udine): ‘Dum docet discunt: Ørberg’s methodology at limelight of Stephen Krashen’s Theories’ 

11.00-11.30 BREAK

 

PANEL 5: Philosophy

11.30-1.00

Maria Giannaki (Paris): ‘The model of Aristotelian philosophy for education, comparison with the platonic philosophy’

Emanuele Pezzani (KCL): ‘Aristotle on music’

Barbara del Giovane (Firenze): ‘Haec nobis praecipere Attalum memini. Seneca’s Masters, between diatribe morality and rhetoric’

1.00-2.00 LUNCH

PANEL 6: Education in Literature

2.00-3.30

Gillian Granville Bentley (KCL): ‘Sex Education and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’

Beth Hartley (Exeter): ‘Ptolemy Chennus’ Novel Research for Scholarship’

Anna Lefteratou (Göttingen): ‘Nonnius’ on India: between pagan and Christian education’

PANEL 7: Literary Canons between theory and practice

3.30-5.00

Theodora Hadjmichael (UCL): ‘Greek Literary Canons and Education: the case of the nine lyric poets’

Beatrice da Vela (UCL): ‘Terence school-reception: a case study for Latin Literary Canon.’

Gabriela Ryser (Göttingen):  ‘Pieriis pollet studiis: Claudian’s Education between Literary Culture and Religion’

5.00-5.45: Conclusions and final discussion.

 

A collection of the abstracts can be found at the conference’s blog: http://educatingthefuture2012.wordpress.com/

To register follow this link or contact the organizers: Beatrice da Vela