This page provides an alphabetized list of participants and papers. Each paper title is linked to a downloadable abstract.
Keynote address (Wed. 27th March, 7:30 p.m.): Ruth Scodel, University of Michigan “Reperformance, Writing, and the Boundaries of Literature”
Greek literature was performed and then reperformed. From the beginning, Greek literature is characterized by its variety of reperformance practices and by the entanglement of oral transmission and written copies. No reperformance can ever have exactly the same effect as an earlier performance, but in ancient Greek reperformance, a text could be changed significantly or not at all; the performance style could be the same or very different (choral becoming solo, sung becoming recited); context could be very similar (the same festival) or very different (a different city, public performance becoming private); the audience may have heard the same work before, or the audience be entirely new. Greeks had no word for literature, but reperformance in changing contexts essentially defined literature for Greek culture.
Archer, George (Iowa State University) “The Quranic Repetition of Psalm 90, or ‘Reading where the pages are white.‘”
Arft, Justin (University of Tennessee) “Repetition or Recurrence? A Traditional Use for ἄνδρεσσι μελήσει in Archaic Greek Poetry”
Austin, Emily (University of Chicago) “‘Achilles’ Desire for Lament: Variations on a Theme”
Bouvier, David (Université de Lausanne) “Repetition and Rupture: Xenophanes versus Homer”
Dance, Caleb (Washington and Lee University) “Versus Incompositus: Improvisation and the Rustic Roots of Latin Poetry”
Donnelly, Cassandra (University of Texas at Austin) “Mixed Literacy and Non-Scribal Writing on Bronze Age Cyprus”
Duffy, William (St. Philip’s College) “‘Godlike’ Slams: professional wrestling as a model for shifts in epithet significance”
Forte, Alexander (Colgate University) “Subtle Tuples: A Cognitive Analysis of Numbered Repetitions in Homeric Epic”
Gaunt, Jasper (Independent Scholar) “‘Homer’ and the Construction of arete in Archaic Greek Art”
Gheerbrant, Xavier (Sichuan University – China) “Repetition in early Greek philosophical poetry”
Golab, Hanna (University of Miami) “Cultic Songs for Asklepios – Ritual Orality Written in Stone”
Herrman, Judson (Allegheny College) “Repetition among the Attic Orators”
Klasova, Pamela (Bowdoin College) “Public Speech in Early Islam: The Case of al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf al-Thaqafī, the Umayyad Governor of Iraq”
Létoublon, Françoise (Université Stendhal, Grenoble) “Repetition, tradition and fiction: the story of Ulysses hunting in the mountains of Parnassus”
Mac an Aircinn, Caolán (University of Texas at Austin) “Breaking and Remaking Terence: the Politics of the Terentian Authorship Debate”
Minchin, Elizabeth (Australia National University) “The creation of a storyrealm: the role of repetition in Homeric epic and Oswald’s Memorial”
Nelson, Thomas (Trinity College, University of Cambridge) “Repeating the Unrepeated: Homeric Hapax Legomena in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry”
Nooter, Sarah (University of Chicago) “Sappho and the Eternal Return of Desire”
O’Connell, Peter (University of Georgia) “Repetition and the Creation of ‘Sappho’”
Person, Ray (Ohio Northern University) “Harmonizations in the Pentateuch and Synoptic Gospels: Repetition and Category Triggering within Scribal Memory”
Slater, Niall (Emory University) “Repetition, Improvisation, and Parody: Eumolpus Re-Takes Troy in Petronius’s Satyrica 83-90”
Verano, Rodrigo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) “Repetition and Fictive Orality in Plato’s Dialogues”
West, Emily (St. Catherine University) “The Flood Myth in the Ancient Near East and India: Repetition and Revision”
White, Stephen (University of Texas at Austin) “Resonant Presence in Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo”
Zelnick-Abramovitz, Rachel (Tel Aviv University) “Repetition and Memory in the Attic Forensic Orations“