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Department of Classics and Ancient History

Conference: Lucan’s Landscapes and Lies, 24-26 July 2024

12 July 2024
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Lucan's Landscape and Lies. 24th-26th July 2024, Department of Classics & Ancient History. Organisers: James Oakley & Liam Preston. With thanks to the generous support of the university's Researcher Development Grant.

We are pleased to announce the upcoming schedule (see below) for the Lucan’s Landscapes and Lies conference at Durham University, 24th-26th July 2024. The conference is generously supported by the Durham University Researcher Development Grant.

The conference will take place in the Department of Classics and Ancient History Ritson Room, 38 North Bailey, DH1 3EU.

Both in-person and online attendance is available and registration can be confirmed via this form. Please note that confirmation of registration and Zoom link (if applicable) will not arrive instantly.

For more information (or if you have any problems with the registration form), please email the organisers James Oakley and Liam Preston.

Conference Schedule

(Timings include 20-minute papers and 10-minute Q&A)

Session 1 (24th July 2024)

15:00-15:30     Arrival

15:30-16:00     James Oakley and Liam Preston (Durham University): Introduction

16:00-16:30     Liam Preston (Durham University): Named and Nameless: How (not) to be remembered in Lucan’s Pharsalia

16:30-17:00     Ryan Masato Baldwin (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): Nominum Umbrae: Lucan’s Confusingly Multivalent Names

Session 2 (25th July 2024)

09:45-10:00      Liam Preston (Durham University): Introductory remarks

10:00-10:30     Claire Saint-Amour (University of Cambridge): (Mis)reading Epic Cityscapes in Vergil and Lucan           

10:30-11:00     James Oakley (Durham University): Mendacious Mountains: Peak Lucan

11:00-11:30     Break

Session 3

11:30-12:00     Kate Jameson (Durham University): The vocabulary of exaggeration in Book Seven of Lucan’s De Bello Civili

12:00-12:30     Elia Rudoni (Pacific Bay Christian School): Lucan's Landscapes and Lies as Neurotic Symptoms

12:30-14:00     Lunch

Session 4

14:00-14:30     Andrea Doda (University of Oxford): Lucan, Ovid, and the Lies of a Public Speech

14:30-15:00     Francesco Scozzaro (Università degli Studi di Palermo): Iamque iter omne latet…: the temple of Jupiter Ammon and Cato between literary fiction, geography, and divination. A reading of Luc. Phars. 9, 511-586

15:00-15:30     Kathryn Wilson (Washington University in Saint Louis): Autochthony and Empire: The Racial Logic of Lucan’s Snake Catalogue

15:30-16:00     Break

Session 5

16:00-16:30     Abbot Henderson (Arizona State University): Blind Ambition: Caesar’s Tour of Troy and the Silent Iliad

16:30-17:00     Megan Daly (University of Florida): Landscape and Lucan’s Portrait of Caesar (and Nero) in Bellum Civile 9 and 10

Evening Conference Meal

Session 6 (26th July 2024)

09:45-10:00     James Oakley (Durham University): Introductory remarks

10:00-10:30     Jamie Wheeler (Princeton University): Quod semper habemus? Spatial, Temporal, Political Collapse Around Lucan's Pharsalia

10:30-11:00     Lorenzo Severin (University of St Andrews): Water Traps: A Multi-layered System of Deceptions in Lucan’s BC 4.402-672

11:00-11:30     Break

Session 7

11:30-12:00     Victoria Lansing (University of Oxford): Whose Missed Irony? Lady Philosophy’s (mis)reading of the Pharsalia in Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae

12:00-12:30     Biancamaria Masutti (Università degli Studi di Padova): Whatever the coast? Lucanian references behind a geographical inconsistency in Paulinus of Nola’s Natalicium 9 (carm. 27 Hartel)

12:30-14:00     Lunch

Session 8

14:00-15:30     James Oakley and Liam Preston (Durham University): Concluding remarks and round-table discussion