SCS-62: Centering the Margins: Thinking Anew with the Drama of the Ancient Mediterranean

Sponsored by:

The Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance

Organizers

Christopher Bungard, Butler University; Suzi Elnaggar, Northwestern University

Discussants

Suzi Elnaggar, Northwestern University

Description

One enduring legacy of the colonial history of the field of Classics is that Latin and Greek authors from all over the Mediterranean get whitewashed into a vague sense of 19th and 20th century Europeanness, while other ethnic communities from the ancient Mediterranean (especially those that are considered to be people of color today) are completely ignored. As a result, scholars of the ancient Mediterranean may unintentionally overlook crucial aspects of an ancient author's lived experiences as subaltern members of their societies which influence their creative output. This tendency towards whitewashing the study of ancient performance has also led to scholars discounting wide swaths of performance history which falls outside contemporary notions of whiteness or eurocentricity. For example, the Triumph of Horus is a well-documented ritual performance text from ancient Egypt, and yet is seldom included in the discussion of early performance (Hedges 2022).

It is only within the past 25 years that scholars of Classics have begun exploring ancient performance through a postcolonial lens. For example, the authors of the fabulae palliatae are notably non-Romans (Umbrian, Oscan, Greek, African). Scholars like Amy Richlin (2017) and Enrica Sciarrino (2011) have highlighted ways that subaltern actors and authors sought to navigate the politics of the middle Republic, sometimes challenging the conceptions that Roman elites had of themselves. Sharon James (1998a, 1998b) has written about the ways that the African playwright Terence explicitly questions again and again the harmful impacts of Roman masculinity. David Konstan (2020) discusses how Classics as a field has expanded both spatially and temporally to include the "sophisticated societies at [the Greek and Romans'] periphery" such as those in North Africa and Southwest Asia.

This panel pulls together scholars of ancient theater and its reception to explore the ways that marginalized characters, creators, and performers (both those from the ancient Mediterranean and the modern global stage) engage with, challenge, and reimagine social realities through performance. The panel will begin with an introduction framing the panel's approach, followed by four presentations that explore topics from the periphery of modern scholarship on ancient theater.