We are pleased to announce the programme for this month’s Thermopylae 2500 online conference (21 November, 9am - 3.30pm). 2020 is the year chosen to mark the 2500th anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae. Thermopylae 2500 marks this occasion in the United Kingdom by bringing together a range of studies from scholars across the world to explore the many and varied legacies of this battle in the ancient and modern worlds.
The contributions to this event will be pre-circulated on the conference website on the 9th November, to be read ahead of the conference: https://thermopylae2500.wordpress.com/
The event will be held on Zoom. To sign-up for the link, please email Fiona Haarer before 16th November secretary@hellenicsociety.org.uk
PROGRAMME
General running order:
Each panel will have a 5-minute introduction with the contributors and their topics. There will then be a 20-minute breakout group session for participants to discuss the papers and approach some general questions presented in the introduction. This is followed by a 25-minute panel discussion and Q&A session, and then a 10-minute break ahead of the next panel. Panel chairs TBA.
PANEL 1: ANCIENT RECEPTIONS (PART ONE)
9.00-10.00
Matt Thompson: “The Spartan Contribution to the Myth of Thermopylae”
Amelia Brown: “Memorials of Glorious Defeat: Ancient Monuments for the Battle of Thermopylae”
Ellen Millender: “Thermopylae as Teacher?: Didactic Spectacle and the Bolstering
of Spartan Socio-Political Structures in the Aftermath of War”
Roy van Wijk: “A Lost Local Memory. Thermopylai, the Battle of Delion and the Thespian Polyandrion”
John Hyland: “Persia’s Thermopylae and the Iconography of Triumph over Greeks”
PANEL 2: ANCIENT RECEPTIONS (PART TWO)
10.00-11.00
Murray Dahm: “Thermopylae and the 300s”
François Santoni: “The memorial game of Thermopylae in the Roman war against Antiochos III”
Elisabeth Slingsby: “This is (Not Quite) Sparta: Pseudo Parallels in ps-Plutarch’s Parallela Minora”
Olivier Gengler: “Intertextual battles of Thermopylai: Memory and identity in Roman and Late Antique Greece”
PANEL 3: THERMOPYLAE AND MODERN HISTORY
11.00-12.00
Martina Gatto: “Lycurgus and Leonidas in Nazi German Ideology and Historiography”
Matthew Sears: “The Devil Can Quote Scripture: the use of Thermopylae by Anticommunists from Göring To Marshall”
Maria Kalinowska & Ewa Janion: “Thermopylae in Modern Polish Culture: The Ideal of Voluntary Sacrifice and its Contestations”
Catherine Muñoz: “Be a good Panamanian, be like Leonidas”
PANEL 4 THERMOPYLAE AND POPULAR CULTURE
12.00-13.00
Vale Sebastián: “Mort Cinder: Space For Dialogue. The Battle of Thermopylae In Argentinean Comics”
Tony Keen: “‘The whole of Greece is waiting’: The depiction of international relations in movies about Thermopylae”
Amanda Potter: “The Heroism of Women: The female experience of the battle of Thermopylae in Xena Warrior Princess episode ‘One Against an Army’ and Steven Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire”
LUNCHBREAK
13.00-14.00
PANEL 5: TEACHING THERMOPYLAE
14.00-15.00
Pandeleimon Hionidis:” Between Palamas’s “Live, our glorious homeland” and Cavafy’s “Never betraying what is right”. Teaching Thermopylae in a Modern Greek Literature class”
Anneka Rene: “Teaching Leonidas at Thermopylae at Secondary Level”
FINAL GROUP DISCUSSION
15.00-15.30
