Wednesday 12 October 2016

Age of Athena - a follow up event to Athena: Sharing New Research

A few months ago this blog, which was initially started to report on aspects of the progress of a book I'm writing, was taken over by something highly relevant to that book - a conference I was organising at Roehampton on Athena. Since then, I've been discussing several possible follow-up events and activities, even including a tour of Athena-related sites throughout Europe.

 

One thing that emerged in the planning of the event was that two of the booklet contributors, Olivia Huntingdon-Stuart ("The Age of Athena") and Houman Sadri ("Synthesising male and female aspects of war in Azzarello and Chiang's Wonder Woman"), were engaging in Athena-related research with lots of interfaces - and from different disciplinary starting-points. Olivia is now planning a follow-up event, titled *The Age of Athena* which will explore gender norms and non-binary concepts via the vehicle of Athena.

Olivia is co-ordinating a meeting to discuss this event next month at Roehampton, on ***21 October***, in the Convent Parlour of Digby Stuart College. If anyone would like to join us, let me know. Or - if anyone would like to suggest possible discussion ideas (including those based away from London...), do get in contact. I'm aware that a trip to SE London in October might simply not be do-able for lots of people... Here’s the programme:

11.00: meet for coffee in Hive Café, Digby Stuart College

11.30-12.45: Introduction of scope of event; participants set out research and other relevant interests leading into informal presentations from Olivia Huntingdon-Stuart and Houman Sadri

12.45-1.45: Break for Lunch (the Hive Café and Digby Diner serve a range of moderately-priced options)

1.45-3.00: Further informal presentations including by Tony Keen. Other contributions welcome! Presentations to lead into discussion of where to go next - conference? activism?

3.00 onwards - wind down with coffee

Possible topics for this initial event and for future exploration are:

Gender norms and non-binary concepts in:
- Classical myth and culture (e.g. gods, divine attributes, parthenogenesis.)
- Medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary cultures
- Pop culture (e.g. Wonder Woman, Xena, advertisements.)
- Literature and art (e.g. Romance Literature, Shakespeare.)
Religion: ancient and modern
Philosophy (e.g. gender and ontology, gendering Plato’s theories.)Thanks for reading this far – let me know if you’d like to join us on 21st - or if anything here chimes with your own interests.

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