Graduate Student Conference: “Change and Continuity”

The question of Change and Continuity is a classic discussion within the Humanities. The two concepts, and how they relate to each other, are used to discuss, and evaluate the extent to which a historical development or event may represent a decisive historical change, or whether a situation has remained largely unchanged. This dichotomy, as it has been traditionally thought, is important in relation to constructing, discussing, and evaluating historical periodizations. It has been used to assign beginnings and ends to chronological periods, thus making it an important point of discussion for our understanding of historical chronologies. 

This model has been the traditional way to consider times of transition in the past, one based on an understanding of the past as a series of events which leads to the present. Evaluations of change or continuity, vibrancy or stagnation, chaos, or stability, tend to begin with comparisons—a comparison made between a point in the present and point in the past, or between two points in the past. But how does our evidence of the past shape our understanding of this dichotomy? Does it challenge it, or confirm it? When the ancient evidence speaks to us, what sort of stories emerge? Do we see stories of continuity or stories of change?

The Canadian Institute in Greece invites graduate students or recent PhDs presenting results derived from their graduate research/dissertations, from Classics, History, Philology, Archaeology, Religious Studies, Anthropology, Modern Languages, or any cognate disciplines, whose work relates to this theme in any aspect of Greek past (broadly defined) to present a paper at the 2023 CIG Graduate Conference, to be held on November 3^rd-4^th, 2023 at the Institute in Athens. 

Some aspects of Change and Continuity that this conference seeks to address are:

• Breaking and maintaining tradition
• Ancient plagues, disasters, catastrophes
• Systems collapse and resilience
• Hegemonies, colonies, empires, and local agency
• Ancient and Modern Greek Identity
• Cultural trauma and social memory
• Art historical styles and 
• Religious continuity or revolution

Applicants should send a 300-word abstract and a CV to katerina.apokatanidis@mail.utoronto.ca. The deadline for submissions is August 15^th, 2023.

** There are some funds available to assist those who wish to attend in person **