Presenting the Past: Responsible Engagement and Ancient Mediterranean History
The Peopling the Past team is thrilled to be hosting the upcoming colloquium,“Presenting the Past: Responsible Engagement and Ancient Mediterranean History”, which will take place from March 23-25, 2023 in Vancouver, BC, co-hosted by Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. The goal of this colloquium is to ask how we as educators inside and outside the academy can more effectively participate in public discourse about the ancient Mediterranean. The event will bring together academics, museum professionals, and public scholars to deliver presentations on the challenges and best practices for teaching and scholarship on the ancient Mediterranean. Specialists from the humanities and social sciences, including senior scholars, early career researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, and non-academic professionals, will collaborate in discussions about cultural heritage, pedagogy, and public history for academic and non-academic audiences.
The meeting will include traditional research presentations, short graduate-student talks, interviews with public programmers, and a live-podcast taping, during which we will be discussing questions related to responsible knowledge creation, communication, and engagement across various learning environments, from the classroom to the museum to social media. Specifically, we aim to address how we can engage in responsible public scholarship that is more inclusive of past diversity and modern audiences. We’re excited to feature the work of several public scholars who are creating innovative and compassionate answers to this question!
This conference has been generously funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection Grant, The Department of Global Humanities and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, The Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies and Green College at the University of British Columbia, Acadia University, the University of Winnipeg, and the Vancouver Chapter of the American Research Centre in Egypt.
The Colloquium Program
| Thursday, 03/23 | Friday, 03/24 | Saturday, 03/25 |
| Session 1: Museums and Cultural Heritage (9:30 am – 11:30am PDT) • Pinar Durgun, “Changing Museum Narratives by Centering People” • Heba Abd el Gawad, “From Museums to Comics: Decolonising Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage” • Annissa Malvoisin, “The Unwavering Divide: Collection and Display Practices in Ancient African Collections” • Kyle Lewis Jordan, “Eyes of the Beholders: Approaches to the Body and Disability in Museums” | Session 2: Digital Humanities and Pedagogy (9:30 am – 11:30am PDT) • Katherine Blouin, “Teaching and Researching Ancient Mediterranean History on Indigenous Land” • Nadhira Hill, “Back to Basics: Illuminating the Hidden Curriculum to Promote a More Diverse and Equitable Field” • Jennifer Stager, Ella Gonzalez, Danielle Ortiz, “The Antioch Recovery Project” • C. Johnston, M. Daniels, S. Higgins, V. Austen, “The Peopling the Past Project: Multivocality and Multimodality in Teaching Ancient History” | |
| Roundtable: Alt-Ac Interview (1pm – 3pm PDT) • Liv Albert, “Let’s Talk about Myths, Baby! Podcasting Greek Myths to the Masses” • Flora Kirk, “Vivid Context: Mediterranean Antiquity, Art, and the Public” • Megan Lewis, “Coming out of the Ivory Tower” | Session 3: Lightning Round (1pm – 3pm PDT) •Aurora Camaño and Sabrina Higgins, “The Digital Mary Project and the Democratization of Databases” • Bourke Karras and Melissa Funke, “Local Outreach, Global Outlook: Digitizing the Hetherington Collection with the Lux Project” • Alan Wheeler and Christine Johnston, “Teaching the Ancient World with Replicas: Integrating 3D Printed Objects to Facilitate Authentic Active Learning and Classroom Inclusivity” • Gino Canlas, Willis Monroe, Andrew Danielson, Julian Weideman, Ian Randall, “Public Engagement and The Database of Religious History” • Victoria Austen and Chelsea Gardner, “Wiki Education and the Ancient Mediterranean Classroom” | |
| Keynote lecture (5 pm PDT) Kara Cooney, “The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World”, Reception to follow (6:30 pm PDT)) | Live Podcast Taping (3:30pm – 5pm PDT) Liv Albert, Chelsea Gardner, and Carolyn Laferrière, “Responsible Myths” |
To register for this free event, click here.
Colloquium Participant Features
- Blog Post #78: Interview with Kyle Lewis Jordan of Curating for Change
In February and March we are featuring public scholars who work across a number of media to represent the ancient world in creative and responsible ways. This week we speak with Kyle Jordan Lewis, early career scholar and curatorial fellow at the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers Museum, on his work to broaden the scope of the study, understanding, and representation of disability in antiquity. - Blog Post #77: Interview with Gino Canlas of the Database of Religious History
In this week’s blog post, we interview Dr. Gino Canlas, a postdoctoral researcher with the Database of Religious History at the University of British Columbia. This project is an open access resource that offers a large-scale study of historical evidence and trends in religious experience from the Neolithic period to the present day. Dr. Canlas will be sharing his work on this project at our upcoming colloquium, “Presenting the Past: Responsible Engagement and Mediterranean History”. - Blog Post #76: Interview with Heba Abd el Gawad of Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage Project
In this week’s blog post, we interview Dr. Heba Abd el Gawad, Egyptologist and project researcher for the AHRC funded project: “Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Views from Egypt”. Her research aims to amplify the voice, visibility, and validity of modern Egyptian communities in UK museums. Dr. Heba Abd el Gawad will be presenting this work at our upcoming colloquium, “Presenting the Past: Responsible Engagement and Ancient Mediterranean History”. - Blog Post #75: Interview with Christine Johnston of the Ancient World in 3D Project
In this week’s blog post, we interview Dr. Christine Johnston, the coordinator of the Ancient World in 3D Project (and video editor for Peopling the Past), who takes us through a collaborative project with several graduate students at Western Washington University which examines the use of 3D printed and replica materials in teaching about ancient cultures and societies. Christine and project member Alan Wheeler will be presenting this project at our upcoming colloquium, “Presenting the Past: Responsible Engagement and Ancient Mediterranean History”. - Blog Post #74: Interview with Flora Kirk of Flaroh Art
In February and March we are featuring public scholars who work across a number of media to represent the ancient world in creative and responsible ways. Our first interview features Flora Kirk, freelance artist who boldly brings the ancient Mediterranean world to life through her vivid and inspiring art. - Blog Post #43: Graduate Student Feature with Annissa Malvoisin
In this week’s Peopling the Past blog post, we present you with another graduate feature. This week we are highlighting the work of Annissa Malvoisin, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, whose research investigates the ceramic production and trade industry during Meroitic Nubia and its potential far-reaching networks linking Nile Valley civilizations Egypt and Nubia to Iron Age West African cultures in Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Ghana, and Libya. - Blog Post #37: Myths, Monsters, and “Serpentine Stories” with Liv Albert
In the next installation of our Monsters and Demons series for the month of October, we interview Liv Albert, creator and host of the popular podcast ‘Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby!’. Read along, as Liv tells us all about her fascination with myths and monsters. - Blog Post #33: The Lux Project with Melissa Funke
In this blog post, we highlight the Lux Project, an undergraduate research and digitization project focused on the Hetherington Collection, a collection of around 450 ancient Mediterranean artifacts housed in the Anthropology lab at the University of Winnipeg. A team of about a dozen student volunteers led by Melissa Funke is photographing, researching, and teaching the public about these objects. - Blog Post #13: Grad Student Feature with Nadhira Hill
In this week’s student feature, we highlight the work of Nadhira Hill, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, whose research problematizes the traditionally Athenocentric definition of the Greek symposium through a comparative exploration of the literary sources and material culture related to ancient Greek drinking practices at Athens and Olynthos.
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