Call for papers - MAARC 2022

Representions of Ancient, Medieval & Modern Mediterranean Women

​AWAWS Panel proposed for MAARC 2, Online Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, 2022

Extant visual representations of ancient, medieval or early modern Mediterranean women are layered with meaning, whether those representations depict human or divine, historical or mythological, Christian or Muslim women. Physical manifestations of the human female form beyond the children born of living women all still embody social, political and cultural spheres in which they were created, received and then transmitted to the present day. Over time, most of these physical images of bodies have been altered, sometimes violently, and all have endured through multiple changes of viewership and significance across myriad cultures and times. Their encoded meanings have been reinterpreted, remade or even wholly reimagined.

Modern and now Post-Modern (or Anthropocene?) and culturally-specific perceptions of women, the female body and gender have also greatly influenced the ways in which ancient and medieval female imagery has been interpreted. Ancient and medieval imagery of women has been, and still is, harnessed as a positive encouragement for self-confidence in some spheres and weaponised in others, either to action or to attack modern feminist (and other) agendas in academic, popular and international discourse.

This online panel for the 2nd Mediterranean Archaeology Australasian Research Community (MAARC) free meeting will explore a variety of ways in which women are represented in the material culture of the ancient, medieval and/or modern Mediterranean cultures (or their receptions); the processes by which these images were made, and how meaning was created, attached to these images, and changed; and the ways in which specific physical depictions of women have changed over media, time and different cultural contexts.

Papers are invited that:

• contribute to the discussion of women and gender representation in ancient material culture;
• examine reception of ancient, medieval or modern imagery of women in late ancient, medieval, modern or post-modern Mediterranean cultures; or
• engage with intersectional discourses such as queer studies, race and ethnicity studies, or disability studies.

This panel is organized by Dr Amelia R. Brown (UQ), with the assistance of Candace Richards (Chau Chak Wing Museum, USydney), on behalf of AWAWS. 

Abstracts for papers of circa 20 minutes are solicited from contributors in Australia, New Zealand or wider Australasia on current archaeological research on the ancient female form, and its reception, by email to MAARC and Dr Brown by December 19, 2021, at the MAARC email: [email protected]. If you have any questions please email Dr Brown via [email protected].