Workshop Description
Despite converging temporally and geographically, the fields of Classics, Religious Studies, and Archaeology have traditionally operated under particular disciplinary divisions and methodological assumptions. The separation between disciplines is acutely evident in the cultures and texts considered appropriate to the study of each (e.g., “pagan” literature and Greek philosophical traditions in contrast to Christian literature and theology) and in the preferences variably shown to the study of texts, ritual, or material culture. One of the most significant moves in recent scholarship has been to recognize that these distinctions do not accurately reflect ancient cultures and are detrimental to our study of the Mediterranean world. Moves to integrate our fields in recent decades have opened up significant new avenues for investigation. Yet, the burden to develop a working knowledge of cognate fields in addition to a mastery of our own particular fields is a labor-intensive enterprise. This Mellon workshop would facilitate our efforts to bridge between our areas by allowing collaboration on a theme that can link our different core disciplines: considering how various aspects of performance influence the construction of cultures and the mechanics of cultural exchange in the post-classical Mediterranean (ca. the third through the ninth centuries C.E.).
The rubric of “performance” offers a helpful theme to organize our shared study of the post-classical world. On the one hand, civic life in the post-classical Mediterranean depended on performance. Such public spectacles as games, dramas, pantomimes, and processions were essential for creating and maintaining a unified civic identity. These events were often the primary medium for communicating ideas of imperial or Greek identity beyond the educational elite. Performance was also a fundamental aspect of elite male culture, as elite men were expected be masters of public performance in the roles as magistrates, bishops, and rhetors. Greek paideia, the educational structures for training these men, translated the mastery of a specialized literary vocabulary and familiarity with a canon of texts into the art of public speaking. Paideia also constructed the apparatus that surrounded this performative culture, particularly coded conventions for dress and mannerisms. Performance, then, served as a mechanism for shaping and reinforcing the cultural idioms that guided the actions of a wide variety of cultural agents. At the same time, these modes of performance were often contested and critiqued, particularly across social groups. For example, Christian bishops critiqued the performances of traditionalist, non-Christian rhetors and attempted to distance themselves from these performances, even while creatively engaging in the same mechanisms of performance. Bringing “pagan” and Christian literature into closer conversation emphasizes their shared assumptions and contestations over cultural ideas.
Despite converging temporally and geographically, the fields of Classics, Religious Studies, and Archaeology have traditionally operated under particular disciplinary divisions and methodological assumptions. The separation between disciplines is acutely evident in the cultures and texts considered appropriate to the study of each (e.g., “pagan” literature and Greek philosophical traditions in contrast to Christian literature and theology) and in the preferences variably shown to the study of texts, ritual, or material culture. One of the most significant moves in recent scholarship has been to recognize that these distinctions do not accurately reflect ancient cultures and are detrimental to our study of the Mediterranean world. Moves to integrate our fields in recent decades have opened up significant new avenues for investigation. Yet, the burden to develop a working knowledge of cognate fields in addition to a mastery of our own particular fields is a labor-intensive enterprise. This Mellon workshop would facilitate our efforts to bridge between our areas by allowing collaboration on a theme that can link our different core disciplines: considering how various aspects of performance influence the construction of cultures and the mechanics of cultural exchange in the post-classical Mediterranean (ca. the third through the ninth centuries C.E.).
The rubric of “performance” offers a helpful theme to organize our shared study of the post-classical world. On the one hand, civic life in the post-classical Mediterranean depended on performance. Such public spectacles as games, dramas, pantomimes, and processions were essential for creating and maintaining a unified civic identity. These events were often the primary medium for communicating ideas of imperial or Greek identity beyond the educational elite. Performance was also a fundamental aspect of elite male culture, as elite men were expected be masters of public performance in the roles as magistrates, bishops, and rhetors. Greek paideia, the educational structures for training these men, translated the mastery of a specialized literary vocabulary and familiarity with a canon of texts into the art of public speaking. Paideia also constructed the apparatus that surrounded this performative culture, particularly coded conventions for dress and mannerisms. Performance, then, served as a mechanism for shaping and reinforcing the cultural idioms that guided the actions of a wide variety of cultural agents. At the same time, these modes of performance were often contested and critiqued, particularly across social groups. For example, Christian bishops critiqued the performances of traditionalist, non-Christian rhetors and attempted to distance themselves from these performances, even while creatively engaging in the same mechanisms of performance. Bringing “pagan” and Christian literature into closer conversation emphasizes their shared assumptions and contestations over cultural ideas.
Moreover, performance and performativity can provide possible theoretical frameworks whereby to explore the impact of these types of activities. We can consider how, for instance, paideia and communal ritual action relied on the repetitive engagement in prescribed modes of discourse and comportment to train the body to function effortlessly in public performative culture. Thinking about cultural engagement in terms of performance also offers new possibilities for understanding a range of activity beyond the stage or the domain of the rhetor and their implications for cultural exchange. Examples here might include the act of writing, the construction of monuments, book-burning, and relic-veneration as performative acts that impose a set of norms upon those who engage in or witness these acts. Such questions have not traditionally been asked of the evidence, for our fields have tended to compartmentalize cultural activity into neatly defined areas of textual production, ritual action, and material culture.
Finally, approaching our study with these various aspects of performance in mind can highlight the methodological constraints that are placed on our own work when it focuses on the products of this highly performative culture. A vast majority of our sources are polished literary products that are performances in their own right. Orations and homilies, for example, are often fictive recreations of public speech-acts. The written evidence, in other words, is a perfected account of a performance and can hinder our access to the real-world circumstances of their delivery. However, approaching these texts as artifacts of multiple layers of performative activity can reveal information about their original circumstances, as well as provide clues about the expectations of various audiences and their own performances when engaging a text. Similarly, physical landscape is often regarded as the product of a culture to be studied apart from textual productions and ritual. However, by considering monuments, statuary, and other architectural features in conversation with literature or with ritual action, the landscape becomes an important partner in the performative culture.