SF XIII
“Communal Responses to Local Disaster:
Economic, Environmental,
Political and Religious”
14-17 MARCH 2019
Claremont McKenna College
https://www.cmc.edu/history/shifting-frontiers-in-late-antiquity
The 13th Biennial Meeting of Shifting
Frontiers in Late Antiquity
Communal Responses to Local Disaster:
Economic, Environmental, Political and Religious
March
14-17, 2019
Claremont
McKenna College
Principal conference organizer: Shane
Bjornlie (Claremont McKenna College); Conference steering committee: Michelle
Berenfeld (Pitzer College), Cavan Concannon (University of Southern
California), Beth Digeser (UC Santa Barbara), Nicola Denzey Lewis (Claremont
Graduate University), Michele Salzman (UC Riverside), Edward Watts (UC San
Diego) and Ken Wolf (Pomona College).
Event Assistants: Michael Gaston
(Claremont Graduate University), Engin Mert Gökçek (UC Riverside), Richard Rush
Ray (UC Riverside)
Conference Program
Thursday, March 14
Reception, Dinner and Keynote Lecture I, Kyle
Harper, “The First Plague Pandemic, From Global to Local” (Athenaeum, 5:30-8:00
PM): opening remarks by Peter Uvin, Dean of the Faculty at Claremont McKenna
College
Friday, March 15 (all sessions at the McKenna
Auditorium except session 3B)
Continental Breakfast (8:00-8:30 AM)
Session 1 (8:30-10:30 AM): Sketching the Contours of
Late Antique Disasters
Chair: Cavan Concannon
Ryan Abrecht (University of San Diego), “Dust
Clouds, Droughts and Domino Effects: Local Responses to Environmental Disasters
in Late Antique Eurasia”
Nadine Viermann (University of Konstanz), “Coping
with Contingency: Patterns of Sensemaking after Urban Disasters in Late
Antiquity
Maria Doerfler (Yale University), “An Earthquake for
Pulcheria: Children and Natural Disaster in Late Ancient Christian Discourse”
Cam Grey (University of Pennsylvania), “Living with
Vesuvius: Towards a Late Roman Culture of Risk”
Coffee Service (10:30-10:45 AM)
Session 2 (10:45-12:45 AM): Military and Political
Disaster I
Chair: Shane Bjornlie
Ralph Mathisen (University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign), “Fight or Flight?: Local Roman Responses to the ‘Barbarian
Invasions’”
Kevin Feeney (Yale University), “The Elevation of a Regional
Usurper as a Response to Local Disaster in Late Antiquity”
Jonathan Arnold (University of Tulsa), “Disaster on
the Danube? Ennodius, Eugippius and the Fate of the Western Empire”
David Gyllenhaal (Princeton University), “’That
through a king’s due advertence disaster to both city and people might be
avoided’: Divine Providence and Human Agency in the Last Great War of Antiquity
(602-628)”
Lunch, independently in Claremont Village
(12:45-2:15 PM)
Session 3A (2:15-4:15 PM): Bishops and Barbarians I (Gaul,
Italy, Spain)
Chair: Michele Salzman
Audrey Becker (Université de Lorraine), “Bishops in
5th-century Gaul: Negotiations with Barbarian Kings in a Time of Emergency”
Emily Hurt (Yale University), “’Nunc locales
gentium singularum miserias’: Networks of Disaster in Late Antique Memory”
Madeleine St. Marie (University of California,
Riverside), “Civic Dissention and Barbarian Incursion: Communal Responses to
Disaster in Sidonius Apollinaris’ Epistles”
Samuel Cohen (Sonoma State University), “’O
Tempora! O mores!’: Gregory I, Constantinople and the Rhetoric of Suffering
in the Aftermath of the Lombard Sieges of Rome, 592-593”
Session 3B (2:15-4:15 PM): Religious
Resources of Response I (Davidson Lecture Hall, Adams 106)
Chair: Elizabeth Digeser
Mark Anderson (California State University, San
Bernardino), “The Roles of Hospitals, Guesthouses and Shelters for the Poor in
Late Ancient Disaster Relief”
Mark Roosien (University of Notre Dame),
“Commemorating Earthquakes in Late Antique Constantinople: From Trauma to
Propaganda”
Daniel Eastman (Yale University), “Feeling the
Apocalypse: Monastic Strategies for Remembering and Coping with God’s Judgment”
Travis Proctor (Northland College), “Environmental
Disaster, the Acts of John and Shifting Cultic Landscapes in
Late Antique Ephesus”
Coffee Service (4:15-4:30 PM)
Reception and Keynote Lecture II, Laura Nasrallah,
“A Small Disaster: Doing Things with Words in Fourth-century Antioch” (Roberts
Pavilion, 5:00-7:00 PM)
Saturday, March 16 (all sessions at the McKenna
Auditorium except session 6B)
Continental Breakfast (8:00-8:30 AM)
Session 4 (8:30-10:30 AM): Climate, Environment
and Natural Disasters
Chair: Edward Watts
Daniel Alford (University of Oxford), “Ctesiphon and
the Tigris: The Effects of Flooding and Progressive Shifts in the Flow of the
Tigris on the Expansion and Decline of the Royal Capital of the Sassanian
Empire (224-651)
Merle Eisenberg (Princeton University), “Rejecting
Catastrophe: The Justinianic Plague and the End of Antiquity”
Andrew Donnelly (Loyola University Chicago), and
Justin Leidwanger (Stanford University), “The Marzameni “Church Wreck”: A
Multi-Scalar Approach to Economic Loss in Late Antiquity”
Edward Schoolman (University of Nevada, Reno),
“Crisis and Resilience in the Paleoecological History of Late Antique Italy”
Coffee Service (10:30-:10:45 AM)
Session 5 (10:45-12:45 PM): Textual and
Rhetorical Responses to Disaster I
Chair: Nicola Denzey Lewis
David DeVore (California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona), “’We alone endured all the harm they inflicted’: Eusebius’
Disaster Narratives as a Riposte to Greek Historians”
Yuliya Minets (Princeton University), “Tower of
Babel: Blessed Catastrophe or Catastrophic Blessing?”
James Shire (University of Toronto), “’The God in
our stars’: Shifting Attitudes Towards Astrology in the Syriac
Chronicle of Zuqnin”
Matthew Chalmers (University of Pennsylvania),
“’Shadows of their former selves’: Late Antique Samaritans, Disaster Narratives
and Historiographical Loss”
Lunch, independently in the Claremont Village
(12:45-2:15 PM)
Session 6A (2:15-4:15 PM): Military and
Political Disaster II
Chair: Shane Bjornlie
Edward Watts (University of California, San Diego),
“Reconstituting after Disaster: Local Identity and the Integrity of the Roman
Imperial Space in the Later Third Century”
Vince VanThienen (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am
Main), “Local Responses to Structural Collapse in the Late Roman Urban Hinterland
of Atuatuca Tungrorum (Germania Inferior)”
Jeroen Wijnendaele (University of Gent), “’State of
Emergency’: The Impact of Odoacer and Theoderic’s ‘forgotten war’ on Italy”
Scott Kennedy (Bilkent University), “The Arab
Conquest in Byzantine Historical Memory”
Session 6B (2:15-4:15 PM): Bishops and
Barbarians II (North Africa) (Davidson Lecture Hall, Adams 106)
Chair: Nicola Denzey Lewis
Alexander Evers (Loyola University Chicago),
“Cyprian of Carthage and ‘the turmoils of the world’: pestilence, persecution
and persistence in the third century AD”
Alex Petkas (University of California, San Diego),
“Local disaster response and the rhetoric of war reports in late Roman Libya”
Stanisław Adamiak (University of Warsaw), “’Inter
tantas strages, ruinas, captivitates et mortes’: the response of
Quodvultdeus of Carthage to the Vandal invasion of Africa”
Eric Fournier (West Chester University), “Relaxing
Religious Coercion in the Wake of Military Defeats: The Case of Late Roman
North Africa”
Coffee Service (4:15-4:30)
Session 7 (4:30-6:30 PM): Religious
Resources of Response II
Chair: Michelle Berenfeld
Jacob Latham (University of Tennessee), “Processions
as Crisis-Response: Social Formation and Ecclesiastical Authority”
Norman Underwood (New York University), “’Inopia
competentis auxilii’: Clerical Recruitment, Disasters and Depopulation in
Late Antiquity”
Robert Wiśniewski (Warsaw University), “Stones,
Bones and Statues: How Holy Objects Protected Late Antique Cities”
Gregor Kalas (University of Tennessee), “The
Image of Pope Sabinianus (604-605) and Imperial Responses to Roman Famine”
Conference Banquet and Dinner Address by Michele
Salzman, “Late Antiquity in California: The Final Frontier” (Gann
Quadrangle, 7:00-9:00 PM)
Sunday, March 17 (all sessions at the McKenna
Auditorium)
Coffee Service (7:45-8:00 AM)
Session 10 (8:00-10:00 AM): Textual and Rhetorical
Responses to Disaster II
Chair: Edward Watts
Christian Barthel (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am
Main), The Prophecy of Carour: Coping with Crisis in Pachomian Monasticism”
Mark Roblee (University of Massachusetts, Amherst),
“’There will come a time…’: Catastrophe and Epistrophē in the
Latin Asclepius”
Ilaria Ramelli (Oxford University), “Analysis of the
Theory of Disasters and their Relation to God in the Letter of Mara Bar
Serapion and Connections with Philosophical Doctrines of Disasters”
Amanda Kenney (University of Missouri, Columbia),
“The First Plague Pandemic, Sanctity and Memory”
Coffee Service (10:00-10:15 AM)
Session 11 (10:15-12:15): Antioch as Case Study
Chair: Elizabeth Digeser
Jonas Borsch (Heidelberger Akademie der
Wissenschaften), “God’s Wrath over Antioch, 526-528 CE: The End of a
Metropolis?”
Laurent Cases (Università degli Studi di Pavia),
“Disaster and Social Trauma at the Frontiers: The View from the Sixth Century”
Kathryn Langenfeld (Clemson University), “’So great
was the terror’: The Magic and Treason Trials in Rome and Antioch”
Jamie Marvin (University of California, San Diego),
“Julian’s Misopogon and the Food Crisis in Antioch—Imperial
Criticism of Community Response”
Conference Lunch and Meeting of the Society for Late
Antiquity (Freeburg Forum, 12:30-2:30 PM)
End of Conference (2:30 PM)