2025 Leventis Conference - Telling Bodies Telling Bodies: A Conference on Corporeal Classical Reception What happens if we centre the body in classical reception studies? What tales does the body tell? And what tales are told about the body?In investigating narratives of embodiment and embodied narratives, we start from two assumptions. First, we take it that the body is no object: it participates in meaning-making. Second, a classic is no mere object either: for one thing, it comes into being through embodied practice.The conference will focus on four areas of exploration in particular: definitions of the body and the classical (What is a body? What is a classic?); embodied cognition and the practice of reception (How does the body participate in classical reception?); classifying bodies and the classical body (How do bodies differ? How do differences relate to values, identities, and standards?); and bodily entanglements in worldmaking (How bounded are bodies? How can ancient narratives help us conceive of human bodies and the environment as an entangled, continuous process?). Confirmed speakers Barbara Graziosi (Keynote Lecture. Libanius’ speech In Defense of Dancers (361 CE): Classical Traditions, Cross-Cultural Confluences, and Embodied Practice. Respondent: Jennifer Homans)Melissa Mueller (Noguchi’s Earth Sculptures: Collaboration, Commemoration, and Corporeal Poetics)Nina Papathanasopoulou (Telling Emotion in Martha Graham’s Greek-themed Dances and Errand into the Maze)Rebecca Laemmle (Tantalizing Gestures. Sinners In and After Homer)Sarah Nooter (Pindar’s Queer Effluence)Naomi Weiss (Bodies Between Pots and Plays)Maria Luisa Catoni (Tracing Bodily Traditions: Texts, Stages, Images)Christian Laes (Aesop Novel 1: A Physiognomical Description of a Telling Body)Katherine Harloe (Winckelmann, Casanova, and Classical Scholarship in Flagrante)Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis (Mobility, Materiality and the Epistolary Medium: Elizabeth Leake, a Victorian Case Study of Embodied Classical Reception)Francesca Beretta ((Em)Bodying Sappho: Italian Queer Receptions (1970s-1980s)) Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Archives of Brown Tongues: Affect and Accent in the Ancient Mediterranean)Mirko Canevaro (Embodiment and Democratic Class Experience from Athens to Modernity)Henry Stead (Red All Over: British Communist Receptions of the Ancient Body)Lilah Grace Canevaro (William Morris and the Embodiment of Dreams)Brooke Holmes (Posidonius on the Shore)Alex Purves (Stephen at the Shore: Joyce, Homer, and the Sea)Peter Kelly (Embodied Wandering: Traversing the Environments of Classical Myth and Irish Poetry)Katerina Stergiopoulou (The Body in Time: The ‘Days’ Poems of C.P. Cavafy and James Merrill) Programme Document HCA Leventis Conference 2025 Programme.pdf (150.79 KB / PDF) Professor Barbara Graziosi The fourteeth Leventis Professor is Barbara Graziosi, who will be joining the Classics Department this semester from Princeton University. Professor Graziosi's biography Registration Please register using the ePay link. The last booking date for this event is 30 October 2025. Register with ePay Nov 13 2025 - Nov 16 2025 2025 Leventis Conference - Telling Bodies This year’s A. G. Leventis Conference, held under the auspices of the A. G. Leventis Visiting Professorship in Greek, and forming part of Edinburgh’s biennial series of international conferences on Hellenic studies, will take place 13-16 November 2025. John McIntyre Conference Centre, The University of Edinburgh, Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5AY Find the venue Register with ePay
2025 Leventis Conference - Telling Bodies Telling Bodies: A Conference on Corporeal Classical Reception What happens if we centre the body in classical reception studies? What tales does the body tell? And what tales are told about the body?In investigating narratives of embodiment and embodied narratives, we start from two assumptions. First, we take it that the body is no object: it participates in meaning-making. Second, a classic is no mere object either: for one thing, it comes into being through embodied practice.The conference will focus on four areas of exploration in particular: definitions of the body and the classical (What is a body? What is a classic?); embodied cognition and the practice of reception (How does the body participate in classical reception?); classifying bodies and the classical body (How do bodies differ? How do differences relate to values, identities, and standards?); and bodily entanglements in worldmaking (How bounded are bodies? How can ancient narratives help us conceive of human bodies and the environment as an entangled, continuous process?). Confirmed speakers Barbara Graziosi (Keynote Lecture. Libanius’ speech In Defense of Dancers (361 CE): Classical Traditions, Cross-Cultural Confluences, and Embodied Practice. Respondent: Jennifer Homans)Melissa Mueller (Noguchi’s Earth Sculptures: Collaboration, Commemoration, and Corporeal Poetics)Nina Papathanasopoulou (Telling Emotion in Martha Graham’s Greek-themed Dances and Errand into the Maze)Rebecca Laemmle (Tantalizing Gestures. Sinners In and After Homer)Sarah Nooter (Pindar’s Queer Effluence)Naomi Weiss (Bodies Between Pots and Plays)Maria Luisa Catoni (Tracing Bodily Traditions: Texts, Stages, Images)Christian Laes (Aesop Novel 1: A Physiognomical Description of a Telling Body)Katherine Harloe (Winckelmann, Casanova, and Classical Scholarship in Flagrante)Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis (Mobility, Materiality and the Epistolary Medium: Elizabeth Leake, a Victorian Case Study of Embodied Classical Reception)Francesca Beretta ((Em)Bodying Sappho: Italian Queer Receptions (1970s-1980s)) Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Archives of Brown Tongues: Affect and Accent in the Ancient Mediterranean)Mirko Canevaro (Embodiment and Democratic Class Experience from Athens to Modernity)Henry Stead (Red All Over: British Communist Receptions of the Ancient Body)Lilah Grace Canevaro (William Morris and the Embodiment of Dreams)Brooke Holmes (Posidonius on the Shore)Alex Purves (Stephen at the Shore: Joyce, Homer, and the Sea)Peter Kelly (Embodied Wandering: Traversing the Environments of Classical Myth and Irish Poetry)Katerina Stergiopoulou (The Body in Time: The ‘Days’ Poems of C.P. Cavafy and James Merrill) Programme Document HCA Leventis Conference 2025 Programme.pdf (150.79 KB / PDF) Professor Barbara Graziosi The fourteeth Leventis Professor is Barbara Graziosi, who will be joining the Classics Department this semester from Princeton University. Professor Graziosi's biography Registration Please register using the ePay link. The last booking date for this event is 30 October 2025. Register with ePay Nov 13 2025 - Nov 16 2025 2025 Leventis Conference - Telling Bodies This year’s A. G. Leventis Conference, held under the auspices of the A. G. Leventis Visiting Professorship in Greek, and forming part of Edinburgh’s biennial series of international conferences on Hellenic studies, will take place 13-16 November 2025. John McIntyre Conference Centre, The University of Edinburgh, Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5AY Find the venue Register with ePay
Nov 13 2025 - Nov 16 2025 2025 Leventis Conference - Telling Bodies This year’s A. G. Leventis Conference, held under the auspices of the A. G. Leventis Visiting Professorship in Greek, and forming part of Edinburgh’s biennial series of international conferences on Hellenic studies, will take place 13-16 November 2025.
