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Textual Amulets of the Mediterranean World: 1000 BCE - 1000 CE

Conference

Textual Amulets of the Mediterranean World: 1000 BCE - 1000 CE

At this conference, a group of international scholars will explore the relationship between text and image on a set of ancient amulets.

People in pre-modern cultures wore many objects on their bodies as amulets, such as roots, seashells, or carved images. But at different points in time all of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean began to inscribe prayers and charms on linen, papyrus, gold foil, or gemstones, and to use them as amulets. At this conference, a group of international scholars will ask and try to answer numerous questions about what happens at this point of transition and why. Does the more permanent nature of a text imply its continual presence, ever repeating? Were textual amulets created and used by literate elites alone? What is the relationship between text and image on amulets? If gods previously listened to prayers, when did they learn to read? This conference stems from a larger project to publish a representative collection of textual amulets from across the Mediterranean and throughout antiquity, facilitating the study of the various traditions, their connections, and transformations.

This conference will be available on livestream via Zoom on May 9 and May 10.

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PARTICIPANTS
Clifford Ando (University of Chicago)
Anke Ilona Blöbaum (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig)
Korshi Dosoo (University of Würzburg)
Rivka Elitzur-Leiman (Fordham University; Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow)
Christopher Faraone (University of Chicago)
Anthony Kaldellis (University of Chicago)
Carolina López-Ruiz (University of Chicago)
Margaret Mitchell (University of Chicago)
Árpád Nagy (University of Pécs, Hungary)
Megan Nutzman (Old Dominion University)
Madadh Richey (Brandeis University)
Joe Sanzo (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow)
Panagiota Sarischouli (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
Sofia Torallas Tovar (University of Chicago)
Erin Walsh (University of Chicago)
Michael Zellmann-Rohrer (Macquarie University / Freie Universität Berlin)

This conference is presented by the Textual Amulets of the Mediterranean World research project at the Neubauer Collegium in partnership with the Divinity School and Classics Department at the University of Chicago.

Neubauer Collegium

At this conference, a group of international scholars will explore the relationship between text and image on a set of ancient amulets.

Register

Yesterday's Encounter: A Play by Mohammad Al Attar

Performance

Yesterday's Encounter: A Play by Mohammad Al Attar

Please join us for a staged reading of Yesterday’s Encounter, a new play by Mohammad Al Attar, directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent.

Anas encounters Walid Salem by coincidence in Berlin. He recognizes the man’s voice; he’s never seen his face. It is the voice of the man who supervised a violent interrogation of Anas, who was blindfolded, when he was arrested in Damascus over ten years ago. Anas makes a report. Proceedings are initiated. In preparation for the trial, both men have to reconstruct what they experienced at the time and bring back what has been suppressed and forgotten.

Can a court case be built on memories of events that took place over ten years ago in a place nobody can visit now? Who is telling the truth? And is there one truth? In this new play, which is inspired by a true event, Al Attar raises questions about the different meanings of justice, and the stories of the past that are impossible to bury without confronting them first.

Born in Damascus and now living in Berlin, Mohammad Al Attar is a playwright, dramaturg, and author celebrated for his work chronicling war-torn Syria and the aftermaths of the 2011 uprisings. Al Attar is in Chicago this spring as a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow, hosted by the Reimagining Cosmopolitanism project with the support of the Neubauer Collegium and 3CT. During his time here, aside from working on a new play, he will take an active part in the project’s research into what it means to be a citizen of the world today.

Presented by 3CT and the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society with support from the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights.

Swift Lecture Hall

Please join us for a staged reading of Yesterday’s Encounter, a new play by Mohammad Al Attar, directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent.

Register

The Green Transition, Planning, and Democracy

Urban landscape with foliage
Conference

The Green Transition, Planning, and Democracy

What might the democratization of green investment look like?

Green industrial policy is on the rise worldwide. The United States, the European Union, and China are each using economic planning to steer their national economies toward decarbonization. In the West, this marks a remarkable departure from past decades of hands-off, market-driven policies. The conference brings together leading political theorists, social scientists, and policy experts concerned with the organizational and economic challenges that these moves toward planning pose for the democratic governance of the economy. Discussions will identify possibilities for democratization that move away from market-based solutions. What might the democratization of green investment look like? Will decarbonization-driven structural dislocation be managed technocratically and top-down, or will it be possible for the democratic community to be engaged with the management of its own recomposition? What, ultimately, does it mean to “democratically” manage conflicting pressures for environmental sustainability, economic efficiency, and decent and plentiful forms of employment in the 21st century?

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PARTICIPANTS
Aaron Benanav (Syracuse University)
Melanie Brusseler (Common Wealth)
Chiara Cordelli (University of Chicago)
Cédric Durand (University of Geneva)
Gary Herrigel (University of Chicago)
Amy Kapczynski (Yale Law School)
Michael A. McCarthy (Marquette University)
Saule Omarova (Cornell Law School)
Charlotte Robertson (Harvard Business School)


This event is sponsored by the Economic Planning and Democratic Politics research project.

Neubauer Collegium

What might the democratization of green investment look like?

Register

WORKS BY: Exhibition Reception

Exhibition Opening

WORKS BY: Exhibition Reception

This event celebrates an exhibition featuring works by four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.”

How much work does it take to make art seem effortless? Works By attempts to answer this question by bringing together four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.” The centerpiece of the exhibition is a floor drawing by Tony Lewis, performatively produced on site starting May 1. A sculpture by Devin T. Mays features pallets collected during his wanderings around Chicago’s South Side. Erased: (Unrelated), a 2012 photograph by Bethany Collins, captures a cloud of chalk dust released into a black void—the remnants of the word “unrelated” repeatedly written on a blackboard and then erased. A large photo by Ellen Rothenberg depicts a work boot; another captures a giant lump of crumpled paper that was once a Barbara Kruger mural. The fruits of these artists’ labors will be on view from May 1 (International Workers’ Day) through July 14 (Bastille Day)—two dates that commemorate landmark events in the history of the working class.

Neubauer Collegium

This event celebrates an exhibition featuring works by four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.”

Register