Popular Receptions of Classical Antiquity

The prominence of reception studies as an international field is a fairly recent development, but it has already impacted decisively on most areas of classical scholarship. Doubting our ability to be unbiased when reading of the past, we study the very communication of the past into later historical periods. Taking as our point of departure the astounding longevity and ubiquity in our culture of so many themes, genres, visual forms, personalities, etc. from the ancient world, the conference will focus on popular receptions of Classical Antiquity. In doing so, we will explore reception phenomena in which subjects and themes are selected that make immediate sense in a ‘present’, and the appreciation of them does not require any scholarly insights.