Our notions of the Ancient World in the West have been dominated by the image of Greek and Roman civilizations and their foundational role in the formation of European culture and institutions. Much recent scholarship has challenged that image in various ways, suggesting a much more complex set of exchanges and influences between Greece and Rome and other cultures around the Mediterranean and beyond. This conference will together a group of leading scholars of Greece, Rome, North Africa and Asia to examine both the diversity of ancient worlds and the ways in which our image of those worlds has been formed through past and current scholarship. We will consider the presence and influence of Africa and Asia in the Greek and Roman world, the internal diversity of what have often been thought of as single civilizations, and explore the ways in which contemporary scholarship reveals the complex world system of ancient civilizations.
Participants
Martin Bernal, Cornell University
Stanley Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles
Ronald Cluett, Pomona College
Nancy Van Deusen, Claremont Graduate University
Ivan Van Sertima, Rutgers University
Kate Toll, University of California Press
Phiroze Vasunia, University of Southern California
Biographies
Martin Bernal (Professor of Government Studies, Cornell University) is best known for his Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (Rutgers University Press, 1987-1991). He is a specialist on the Chinese history and politics and the author of Chinese Socialism to 1907 (Cornell, 1977) as well as numerous essays on early Afroasiatic language and culture.
Stanley Burstein (Department of History, California State University, Los Angeles) is a specialist on Greek relations with ancient North African civilizations and the author of numerous publications, including Graeco-Africana: Studies in the History of Greek Relations with Egypt and Nubia (A.D. Caratzas, 1995) and Ancient African Civilizations: Kush and Axum (Markus Wiener, 1998).
Ronald Cluett (Department of Classics, Pomona College, Claremont) is completing a study of the ancient silk road and its place in nineteenth century European literature and politics.
Katharine Toll (University of California Press, Berkeley) is Classics editor at the University of California Press and a specialist on Vergil and early Roman imperialism.
Nancy Van Deusen (Department of Music, Claremont Graduate School) is the author of numerous works on medieval music, liturgy and intellectual culture, including Tradition and Ecstasy: the Agony of the Fourteenth Century (Claremont Cultural Studies, 1997) and The Intellectual Climate of the Early University (Medieval Institute, in press).
Ivan Van Sertima (Department of African Studies, Rutgers University) is the editor of the Journal of African Civilizations and the author of They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (Random House, 1977), as well as numerous works on Caribbean literature, linguistics and ancient African science and technology. His latest book is Early America Revisited.
Phiroze Vasunia (Department of Classics, University of Southern California) is the author of The Gift of the Nile (University of California Press, forthcoming), a book on Greek perceptions of Egypt. Other interests include the history of modern colonialism and the reception of the classics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.