Durham University

Department of Classics & Ancient History and Department of Theology & Religion

14-16 July 2011

The interdisciplinary conference “Configuring Communities” (Durham University, 14-16 July 2011) will investigate the complex socio-political dimensions of ancient epistolography, i.e. the ways in which the formal aspects of the genre interlock with processes of group formation and identity construction. The “communal” aspects of epistolary communication play themselves out in a variety of ways, e.g. with communities writing to individuals, individuals writing to communities, or communities writing to one another etc. These phenomena give rise to a range of heuristic interests: (1) the identity politics of character-drawing and selfpresentation; (2) corporate authorship and collective addressees; (3) functional equivalences – personal appearance, oral messenger, sending a letter; (4) community and confidentiality; (5) letters as means of communicating with geographically dispersed addressees; and (6) ancient epistolary theory. Read the rest of this entry »