Twenty years ago today

I realised something today that has shocked me - it was twenty years ago today that a conference I organised along with Karen Pierce took place in Cardiff at the institution that was then the University of Wales College of Cardiff and which is now Cardiff University. The conference topic - Violence and Power: An International Symposium on Rape in Antiquity - grew out of the work that Karen and I were each doing in Wales on aspects of rape in the ancient world. What I was focusing on at this time was Athena's vulnerability to rape at the hands of Hephaistos. From memory, the paper I gave at the conference was called 'abusing Athena' and it grew into a chapter on 'the vulnerability' of Athena for the book that grew out of the event, Rape in Antiquity (1997, 2002). My thinking has become increasingly sophisticated over the decades (DECADES!) but there was a freshness to my work then that I'm finding it interesting to recall.  I'm also enjoying remembering the range of participants at the event many of whom are still active practitioners in classics and other fields.  But a lot of us will always deeply miss one of the speakers, Keith Hopwood, my doctoral supervisor, who died in 2007. I kept one of the posters, which is up on my office wall. I hopefully have the progamme and abstracts somewhere, and, somewhere, at least one version of my paper.

 

Stop press! Karen has blogged on this anniversary too at http://darksideofthecatalogue.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/rape-in-antiquity-twenty-years-ago/