Dear Colleagues:

We - Leah Lazar and Eric Driscoll - are pleased to issue a call for submissions to “The New Athenian Empire”, a scholarly gathering on the history of Athenian imperialism that will be held in Oxford, England, on 26-27 June 2023. Hybrid participation will also be possible.

The goal of the conference is to bring together established and emerging scholars whose work is advancing new historical understandings of the fifth-century BCE Athenian empire. In contrast to scholarship in the 20th century, which tended to be Athenocentric if not openly pro-Athenian, more recently historians of the empire have often sought to clarify the fragmented but exploitative mechanics of imperialism in its various guises. Picking up where the Interpreting the Athenian Empire volume (Ma, Papazarkadas, and Parker [edd.], 2009) left off, we seek to provide a forum for the exchange of recent thinking on the Athenian empire, and thereby to advance towards new syntheses of its history. More specifically, we hope to address two broad questions that point the way toward a less Athenocentric vision of the empire:

1) How did the allies respond to Athenian imperialism, whether to challenge, welcome, or otherwise react to it?

2) How did the institutional and/or conceptual structures of Athenian imperialism impact, draw on, or otherwise intersect with other structures in the “long fifth century” (ca. 508–387) and afterward?

These questions will move the scholarly conversation forward in three respects: by broadening the kinds of evidence at issue; by focusing attention on locally specific, diachronic dynamics of coercion and consent; and by placing Athenian imperialism within a broader historical context that allows us to see how it drew on and reshaped late Archaic civic culture, while also preparing the way for the new politics of the late Classical and even Hellenistic worlds.

We invite submissions that address one or both of the above questions by discussing issues such as (but by no means limited to) the quality and quantity of allied agency vis-à-vis Athens; how overlooked evidence (archaeological, literary, numismatic or documentary) can open up new avenues for thinking about the fifth-century Aegean, such as environmental history; the reconfiguration of governmental structures or functions in subject cities; the active adaptation of earlier models for international domination or imperialism; network theory, the new institutionalism, big data or other recent approaches. As we hope to assemble a thematically, methodologically, and conceptually diverse conference, these ideas are offered only exempli gratia. Given the need for disciplinary self-reflection and refashioning in the current political moment, we hope that all the contributions will help to reshape the study of this canonical topic in ancient history for the future.

Submissions should take the form of a 300–500 word abstract (bibliography not included in the word count) sent in MS Word or PDF format to thenewathenianempire@gmail.com by July 14, 2022. We especially encourage submissions from women and early-career researchers. Please avoid including any personally identifying information in the text of the abstract. We plan to respond to submissions by the end of August.

Best wishes,
Leah Lazar (leah.lazar@classics.ox.ac.uk)
Eric Driscoll (edriscoll@fas.harvard.edu)