Monday 28 October 2013

SCAPAT Essay Contest


SCAPAT Undergraduate Essay Contest 2013-2014

La Section canadienne de l’Association pour l’Antiquité tardive est heureuse d’annoncer le lancement d’un concours annuel d’essais niveau 1er cycle portant sur n’importe quel thème relatif au monde méditerranéen entre 200 et 650 après J.-C. Les essais, soit en français ou en anglais, doivent être d’une université canadienne mais il n’est pas nécessaire qu’ils soient rédigés dans un cours portant sur l’Antiquité tardive, ni que les participants soient inscrits dans un programme spécifique (archéologie, histoire de l’art, études classiques, histoire, etc.). Un prix de 150$ sera attribué au gagnant. Les essais devront être soumis par courrier électronique (à partir d’un courriel d’une université), soit par l’étudiant ou par le professeur au nom de l’étudiant. Dans un cas comme dans l’autre, l’étudiant devra avoir l’approbation du professeur. Les documents doivent être envoyés en format pdf à:
Dr. Conor Whately
Department of Classics
University of Winnipeg
515 Portage Ave.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada
Tel.: 204-786-9879
c.whately@uwinnipeg.ca

L’essai ne doit contenir aucune information permettant d’identifier l’auteur. Le nom de l’étudiant, son courriel, son institution et le titre de l’essai seront fournis dans un document séparé aussi envoyé par courrier électronique. Si l’essai est soumis par un professeur, le nom et le courriel de l’étudiant doivent être inclus.

Les essais doivent être soumis tels qu’ils ont été présentés dans le cadre du cours, sans révision ou corrections, à l’exception des fautes typographiques. Les textes doivent compter 15-22 pages (incluant la bibliographie) à double interligne. Les étudiants ne peuvent soumettre qu’un seul essai par année.

Les travaux seront jugés à la fois sur la forme et sur le contenu. L’essai sélectionné devra être bien écrit, structuré de façon claire, devra être exempts d’erreurs grammaticales ou syntaxiques et le gagnant du concours devra avoir fait preuve d’un bon usage des sources pertinentes dans la rédaction de la dissertation. De plus celle-ci traitera le sujet de façon rigoureuse et présentera idéalement un caractère innovateur. La date limite du concours est le 30 avril 2014. Le gagnant sera avisé en juillet (2014) et annoncé dans le prochain bulletin SCAPAT.

The Canadian section of the Association pour l’Antiquité Tardive (Association for Late Antiquity) is pleased to announce the launch of an annual prize for the best undergraduate essay, in English or French, on any theme on the Mediterranean world in Late Antiquity between A.D. 200 and 650 at Canadian universities. Applicants do not need to be a major in a pertinent discipline (Archaeology, Art History, Classics, History, etc.) to submit their work. Furthermore, the course for which the essay was written need not be focused specifically on Late Antiquity. The prize for the winner will be $150. Essays should be submitted electronically (from a university e-mail address) by either the student or the instructor on the student’s behalf. In either case, the student should have the instructor’s endorsement. They should be sent in pdf format to:

Dr. Conor Whately
Department of Classics
University of Winnipeg
515 Portage Ave.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada
Tel.: 204-786-9879
c.whately@uwinnipeg.ca

There should be no indication of the student’s identity on the essay document itself. Instead, the required information should be provided on a separate document (also sent electronically) that indicates the student’s name, email address, university affiliation, and the title of the paper. If the essay is being submitted by an instructor the name and email address of the applicant should be included.

The essay should be submitted as it was written for its course without revisions, with the exception of typographical corrections. It should be 15-22 pages in length (including bibliography) and double-spaced. Students may submit only one essay per year.

The judging is based on both the essay’s content and its form: the winning essay must be well written, clearly organized and free from errors of grammar and syntax; and the contest winner will have made good use of the pertinent sources, have covered their chosen subject thoroughly, and ideally have provided new insights on their chosen topic. The deadline for submitting material to the competition is April 30th, 2014. The winner will be notified in July (2014) and will be announced in a subsequent SCAPAT newsletter.


Wednesday 16 October 2013

Fall, Transformation, and Beyond

It's been far too long since I've written one of these.  So, here goes - even if this really is just a rehashing, or, maybe, revisiting something that I wrote about earlier.  Basically, the questions I have are how ought we approach late antiquity (fall, decline, etc.), can or should we apply this sort of interpretation to particular eras, and/or does this obscure our picture of the period (or sub-periods) as a whole?

I've finished reading the first set of assignments for my Topics in Ancient History Course here at the UofW entitled the "Fall of Rome".  Said assignment was on just that topic:  whether the empire fell, transformed, or something else, or at least what some scholars have had to say about this.  I've really enjoyed reading their papers, and not surprisingly, even with such a small group of students, there are a range of views.

Some have highlighted the fact that the Roman Empire no longer exists; ergo there must have been a fall of some sort.  Others have highlighted the success and vitality of Christianity and so taken the transformation approach.  Others have argued that it's largely a question of perspective, and gone with something approximating the middle ground.  Others still have argued that it's all rather futile, and that more energy should be devoted to the events and facts, and less to modern labels.  Good cases have been made for each view.

Suffice to say, given that I've spent a good deal of time with Procopius, it should come as no surprise that my personal view has been that what we have in the late antique east is more akin to a transformation than a decline, at least up to a point, and at least for a number of people in the eastern Roman Empire.  The empire was expanding, the population and the economy were growing, and its capital was in a state of monumentalization (if that's the right term).

But around about the time that the plague showed up in 541 or so things seem to have started to go in another direction.  Many have commented on this, some saying it was as bad as some sixth century authors make it out to be, others saying that the effects were far less pronounced.  Certainly, it had some sort of impact.

All in all, reading these assignments (and doing this course) has me thinking that I really do need to consider Justinian's role in all this a bit more.  This has to be the next major project:  Justinian, the Burden of Reconquest, and the Fall of the Roman Empire.  We have texts that cover the good and the bad in considerable detail (Procopius, notably), there has been some work done on sixth century sites, and there are some suggestive sixth century inscriptions.  But, with respect to the material evidence I fear we don't have the same quality of stuff that we have for the west, particularly for places like Italy (discussed by Ward-Perkins, and others).  Does this make a balanced-analysis impossible?  Is there a way to overcome these obstacles?  I'm certainly of the mind that every last piece of evidence must be employed, as I've said before - and now in print! (LAA 8.1).

Is it suitable to make the premise of the project:  "The Eastern Roman Empire declined in the second half of the sixth century as a result of the military actions and foreign policy of its most famous emperor, Justinian"?  Does cornering myself into something like this from the get-go make my view necessarily narrow?  Hmmm....