[Antiquitas] Public and Private in the Roman House and Society: CFP

[Laura Nissinen]

*Call for Papers: Public and Private in the Roman House and Society 
Conference*

April 18-20, 2013, University of Helsinki, Finland

Abstract deadline: December 15, 2012

E-mail: romanhouse2013 at gmail.com

Ancient Roman houses were designed to suit both the private life of its 
occupants and the demands of public life. As a result, the division 
between public and private spaces inside the domus was a complicated 
topic even for the Romans themselves. Previous scholarship has tended to 
treat the /domus/ in terms of a rigid division between public and 
private, with the same division acting as a gender marker for (male) 
political activities and (female) domestic activities respectively. This 
strict division within the household now seems outdated. The aim of this 
conference, then, is to take a fresh look at notions of public and 
private within the /domus/ by exploring the public and private spheres 
of the Roman house from the first century BCE to the third century CE. 
The "Public and Private in the Roman House and Society" is an ongoing 
project organizing its second major event, building on the success of a 
workshop at NYU this October.Keynote speakers include Filippo Coarelli, 
Margareta Steinby and Paul Zanker.

We therefore invite papers that explore the complex relationship between 
public and private in Roman society from a variety of perspectives -- 
historical, archaeological, philological, architectural and 
anthropological -- in order to further the understanding of the /domus/ 
as a place for social, cultural, political and administrative action.

Potential themes include but are not limited to:

- The house and the city: Political and administrative spaces

- The Roman house as political, religious, social and cultural arena

- Newest theories and methods in the study of privacy/public in the 
Roman House

- Public and private in material culture and artefact studies

- The provincial house: Local and Roman building traditions and usages

- Changes and Continuities of the Roman house in Late Antiquity

- Gender in the house

The conference is organized by the project Public and Private in the 
Roman House (http:// romanhouse.org/), which seeks to contribute to the 
ongoing debate on privacy in the ancient world as well as the issues of 
how the limits between public and private spaces were drawn. In an 
attempt to gain new perspectives on these questions, the project seeks 
to utilize comparative anthropological theories concerning the 
conceptualization of the public/private interface.

Please submit your abstract (300 words) as a [word/pdf] file to Juhana 
Heikonen at romanhouse2013 at gmail.com Please include your name, academic 
affiliation and address in your email.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is *December 15, 2012*

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