Classics and Africa

The research group Classics at the Crossroads: Partnership, Mobility, and Exchange Between Ghana, Nigeria, and Canada is pleased to announce a call for papers for two upcoming projects: Res Difficiles and Classics an/in Africa.

“As members of a global collaborative project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Classics at the Crossroads: Partnership, Mobility, and Exchange Between Ghana, Nigeria and Canada, we recently held a conference at University College London entitled Classics and/in Africa (July 3-4, 2025). This conference was intended to facilitate a flexible and open-ended dialogue, where Africa is at once the focus of research and the site of current disciplinary praxis.

“Recent scholarship in Classics has both redirected the exclusive focus on ancient Greece and Rome to study of the broader ancient Mediterranean as a space of diversity and connectivity and traced the transmission of classical antiquity in cultures and regions beyond the West. Such work includes the study of ancient African cultures, representations of Africa by Greco-Roman authors, and African receptions of the Classics. Speakers at the conference offered innovative contributions to these topics, at once building on previous work and pointing toward new directions for the future.”

1. Res Difficiles:

“The first will be a special, guest-edited issue of the online, open-access journal Res Difficiles on Classics and Africa. We anticipate that this special issue will be a focused distillation of approaches to the question of what Classics means in Africa, represented by four to six essays (each approximately 6,000 words in length). The essays in this volume, rather than privileging a single paradigm for African Classics, will speak to the diversity of approaches, including points of debate and disagreement. Topics and sub-fields may include, but are not exclusive to:

• African receptions and adaptations

• Comparative studies

• Representations of Africa in antiquity

• Analyses of Classics’ colonial legacy and/or globalizing approaches to the Classics

We anticipate that this special issue will be published in 2027. “

2. Classics and/in Africa

“The second publication project will be a larger edited volume on Classics and/in Africa (press TBA—we have already received some expressions of interest). This volume will feature essays on the themes outlined above by scholars from all regions of the world; it will also include space for scholarship in Classics by Africa-based researchers that may or may not thematize Africa (approximate publication date in 2028).”

Expressions of interest are invited for both publication projects. Applicants may indicate a preference for either publication project, but keep in mind that the editors will make the final decision as to acceptance and publication venue, and that all submitted essays will go through the peer-reviewing process.

Potential contributors should submit an abstract of no more than one page in length to Luke Roman (romanl@mun.ca) by February 2, 2026.

Editors: Hasskei Majeed (U. Ghana), Justine McConnnell (KCL), Olakunbi Olasope (U. Ibadan), Luke Roman (Memorial University).

Editorial Board of Res Difficiles: Hannah Čulík-Baird, Editor; Luke Roman, Associate editor; Elke Nash, Associate editor.

For more information on Classics at the Crossroads, click on the link below:

Deconstructing Eurocentric Universalism in Greek Literature.

Stella Antwiwaa (PhD) invites ACN members to attend the upcoming talk: “Deconstructing Eurocentric Universalism in Greek Literature”. This talk will be hosted by the Department of Classics at Memorial University (Canada), and online attendance will be made available via Zoom.

Abstract:

“The study interrogates the Eurocentric claim of universality in classical Greek literature by comparing four Euripidean plays with four Ghanaian plays. Drawing on African feminist criticisms, it examines representations of gender, patriarchy, and women’s experiences of subjugation, agency, and resistance across two distinct cultural contexts. The study tests whether Greek tragedy provides a universal model for gender discourse, challenging prevailing reception scholarship that positions African dramatists as dependent on Greco-Roman paradigms. It evaluates how Euripides exposes yet reproduces patriarchy, and how Ghanaian playwrights reinvent women as agentive yet constrained within colonial and postcolonial structures. Rather than devalue the Classics, it reframes it within an African-centered interpretive lens, arguing that Ghanaian and African societies can mobilize their own histories, folktales, and myths to address contemporary gender debates. The findings aim to nuance claims of universality, and contribute to efforts to decolonize Classical Studies.“

For more information, scan the QR code at the bottom of the poster to visit the Memorial University Classics website.

Click the button below to register and join online via Zoom:

Cultures of Violence and Female Resistance: Receptions of Ancient Greek Myths from the 14th to the 21st Century, in Europe and Beyond.

The AGRELITA Project invites a call for papers for the upcoming international conference: “Cultures of Violence and Female Resistance: Receptions of Ancient Greek Myths from the 14th to the 21st Century, in Europe and Beyond”. This conference will be hosted by the University of Caen Normandie.

“Among modern and contemporary interpretations of Antiquity, there is a striking proliferation of writings about mythical female figures from ancient Greece. In numerous dramatic adaptations, novels, and comic books—the list is not exhaustive, and these works are often linked to visual representations—authors give voice and interiority to female figures who, in ancient texts and many of their later interpretations, were often subordinated to male heroes, rendered invisible, reduced to supporting roles, or depicted as deserving of the symbolic, physical, psychological, and/or political violence inflicted upon them.”

Download the full call: English / French

Submission Guidelines:

Proposals for papers, in French or English (title and abstract of 200-300 words), should be sent, along with a brief CV, no later than January 15, 2026, to the following addresses:

• catherine.gaullier-bougassas@unicaen.fr

• lorene.bellanger@unicaen.fr

After review of the proposals, acceptance will be notified around mid-February 2026.

Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered according to the terms and conditions of the University of Caen Normandy.

The conference proceedings will be published in the collection “Recherches sur les réceptions de l’Antiquité” by Brepols (https://www.brepols.net/series/RRA).

Proposed articles must be unpublished.

Organization:

• Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, University Professor of Medieval French Language and Literature, ERC Agrelita (Principal Investigator), CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie.

• Lorena Lopes da Costa, Associate Professor of Ancient History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).

• Lorène Bellanger, Project Manager, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie.

• Julie Labregère, Postdoctoral Fellow, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie.

• Giulia Parma, Postdoctoral Fellow, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie.

• Adrian Faure, Postdoctoral Fellow, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie.

For more information, click on the link below to visit the AGRELITA Project ERC Advanced Grant website:

1st International Graduate Conference (Classical Association of Ghana)

The Classical Association of Ghana invites graduate students and early career researchers (with not more than two years research experience after PhD) to submit abstracts (and, subsequently, papers based on the abstracts) for their maiden two-day international graduate conference. This conference will take place December 16-17, 2025, at the University of Ghana in Legon.

Theme:

“In this conference, we seek to explore ‘vice’ and its various manifestations and effects. Vice is traditionally conceived as that which is deficient or falls short of good. It manifests in several ways: the social (epistemic injustice: when a hearer gives a deflated credibility to a speaker not based on the merit of the speaker’s discourse but due to either race, gender, religious identity, or any such reason, Fricker 2009); the political (kakistocracy: bad governance, political corruption; kakonomia, bad constitution); the moral (licentiousness, sloth, greed due to the competitive strength of pleonectic hankerings over continence or moderation). Our goal is to invite graduate students and early career researchers in Classics and Philosophy to explore this important concept.”

Thematic areas to be explored include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The nature and metaphysics of vice (a self-destructive entity?)

• Agency, freewill, and vice

• Political corruption

• Epistemic Injustice

• Bad laws and governance

• The phenomenology of hate

• Thucydides on the origin of stasis and polemos

• Hubris and Apotheosis

• The psychology of evil

• Greek tragedy and vice (e.g., infanticide, matricide, uxoricide, conjuxide, etc.)

• God, humans, and the limits of piety and reason (e.g. Oedipus’ fate, Creon and Antigone on right decision making)

• The origin of evil

• African concept of evil

Application:

Submitted abstracts should be between 300-500 words. Those whose abstracts are selected will be given a four-month period to submit their full papers. Each presenter will be allocated 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for Q & A. Each paper will be assigned a responder, a senior researcher in the thematic area selected.

Please send abstracts as pdf to sopeprah@ug.edu.gh and moa24@cam.ac.uk with the subject line “Graduate Conference in Ghana”.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: May 30, 2025.

Other:

This conference is part of the ongoing activities undertaken as part of the Classics Beyond Borders collaboration between the Classical Association of Ghana, University of Ghana, University of Cape Coast, Princeton University (USA), and University of Cambridge (UK).

The conference is generously supported by Princeton Africa World Initiative, Princeton University, and Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Travelling bursaries (from your main capital cities, e.g., Johannesburg, to Accra) are available for successful applicants from universities in Africa. Please indicate in your submission if you would like to be considered for a bursary.

Conference Organisers:

Stephen Peprah (PhD) (University of Ghana & University of Toronto)

Michael Okyere Asante (University of Cambridge & UESD, Somanya)