"Ancient Worlds – Modern Perspectives" Working Group

The “Ancient Worlds – Modern Perspectives” working group unites doctoral candidates from various disciplines in ancient civilization studies whose research emphases and interests cover a period ranging from early Greece to the late Roman Empire. The working group engages in a productive dialogue on modern research approaches for ancient civilization studies, with interdisciplinary exchange between researchers in the fields of ancient history, classical archaeology, and classical philology as well as their neighboring disciplines. The group thus plays a crucial role in encouraging scholarly exchange among young researchers in ancient civilization studies at the University of Freiburg.
The initial common frame of reference is the specific profile of ancient civilization studies in Freiburg, which focuses predominantly on cultural studies of the Mediterranean region. This profile is expressed in the topics of the dissertation projects the members are working on and even more so in their methodology. Ultimately, what the paradigm of ancient civilization studies as cultural studies refers to is the fundamental openness of the academic field, which is characterized by manifold overlappings with other disciplines and is not closed to methods and theories developed in other fields. At the same time, a cultural studies approach evokes a diverse methodological vocabulary that oscillates between readily operationalizable analytical categories and more or less vague metaphors. Thus, the members of the working group grapple with similar issues in their dissertation projects with regard to concrete possibilities for applying key concepts of cultural studies. These issues are successively problematized and discussed in the working group.
Accordingly, the working group holds theory seminars on various themes, in which a connection is made between several of the members’ dissertation projects. The topics of these seminars include possibilities for applying spatial concepts formed in the course of the spatial turn or the potential insight offered by applying concepts of media and communication theory to Greco-Roman antiquity in the Mediterranean region.