Call for Papers

Update: The deadline of our Call for Papers has been extended to 15 December 2023.

Call for Papers: Association of Ancient Historians 2024 Annual Meeting 

Harvard Classics Department and Ancient Studies are delighted to host the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians (AAH), to be held from the evening of Thursday, 18th April until the morning of Sunday, 21st April, 2024. This meeting will mark the 50th Anniversary of the AAH, which was first formalized at Harvard in May 1974. 

We invite abstracts for papers of 15-20 minutes in length. All sessions will be plenary and in-person. Speakers should be members of the AAH.

The big anniversary offers an exciting opportunity to look to the future of our discipline and to think about its onward development. Accordingly, in addition to open panels on any aspect of ancient history, including pedagogy, we welcome abstracts related to the following themes:

God, History, and the Anthropocene

(looking at the scale and texture of the questions we ask about antiquity, prompted particularly by ‘deep history', environmental change, and ancient and modern notions of the role of the divine, fate, or other superhuman powers in history)

Complex Origins: Racial Formations in the Ancient World

(looking at intense recent reappraisals of origins, race, and identity, prompted by advances in the questions asked of and answered by DNA studies, renewed urgency of questions about race in ancient societies, and dynamic rethinking of population movements)

The Exploited: Questions

(building on established scholarly traditions of investigating the ‘99%’, whether via Marxist frameworks of exploitation, focus on ‘daily life’ and ‘popular culture’, or the intentional recovery of ’silent’ groups, what are the particular challenges and opportunities offered by newer methodologies and approaches?)

Beyond the Mediterranean?

(as ancient historians increasingly seek to move beyond defining our field as ‘Greek-and-Roman’ or even ‘Mediterranean’, what are the opportunities and challenges offered by scaling-up geographically, expanding chronologically, and/or thinking comparatively?)

Focal Points and Blind Spots

(how, why, and where do ancient historians’ questions cluster, and how best might we stimulate and disrupt these processes?)

Please send anonymous abstracts of no more than 500 words to 2024AAH@fas.harvard.edu. The deadline for abstract submission is 15 December 2023. Please direct any questions to the same email address.

Subvention funding is available through application to the AAH Subvention Fund. Applicants must be members of the AAH, but need not be presenting at the meeting to apply.