Sponsored by University of Helsinki, Finland

Thursday, April 18, 2013 - 12:01pm - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 4:01pm

Location:
University of Helsinki, Finland
Helsinki 00014
Finland

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outdated.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 city



The conference is organized by the project Public and Private in the

Roman House (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. Please include your name,

academic affiliation and address in your email.

Contact:
Juhana Heikonen
romanhouse2013@gmail.com