Lecture: History from Below and Digital Humanities in Mediterranean Studies: Slave Agency in Antiquity
CEU
Vienna Campus
Quellenstrasse 51
Room: B-505
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Hybrid event
Speaker
Abstract: The history of the ancient Mediterranean has been overwhelmingly written as a history from above, focusing on male elites and the states they operated. Subaltern people have been usually approached as objects of domination and exploitation, rather than as active historical agents. Over the last decade, new works and approaches have opened up a new path forward: to rewrite the history of the ancient Mediterranean from the point of view of history from below, placing subaltern people at the centre: to complement the study of what was done to them with the study of what they did. In this lecture, I aim to present the aims and initial results of a large-scale research project I am currently directing, which explores the agency of enslaved persons in the making of societies and cultures in the ancient Mediterranean between 1000 BCE and 300 CE. Exploring slave agency systematically requires not only new theoretical perspectives, but also new methodological tools; hence the need to combine history from below with the tools and the opportunities offered by Digital Humanities.
Kostas Vlassopoulos is Professor of Ancient History in the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Crete and Research Director of the Department of the Ancient and Byzantine World at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies. His research interests include the history of ancient slavery, intercultural relations and globalization in antiquity, and ancient politics and its modern reception. He has recently received an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council for the research programme SLaVEgents: Enslaved Persons in the Making of Ancient Societies and Cultures across Western Eurasia and North Africa, 1000 BCE – 300 CE (2023-2028). His publications include Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (2007); Politics: Antiquity and its Legacy (2010); Greeks and Barbarians (2013); Historicising Ancient Slavery (2021); and Greek and Roman Slaveries (2022). He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Ancient History and Brill’s Research Papers in Ancient History series.
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