“Communication” 4th Graduate Symposium in Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Event time: 
Friday, March 4, 2022 - 5:30pm
Event description: 

The 2022 Graduate Symposium in Ancient Near Eastern Studies (GSANES) will take place Friday March 4 - Saturday March 5 in a hybrid format: in person at Yale University (HQ 276), and online on Zoom. This is the fourth in a series of symposiums organized jointly by graduate students at Yale, Brown, and Harvard universities.

The topic of “Communication” is as relevant today as it was in ancient societies. How do members of social and economic networks communicate with each other in order to maintain and grow, or conversely, to shift and break, the relationships that thread the fabric of their communities? How do different formats and systems of communication convey information across spatial and temporal boundaries with varying levels of reliability, accuracy and permanence, and what is the impact of these communications on contemporary and future society?

Eight graduate student papers have been selected for the conference. An opening keynote lecture will be delivered by Cécile Michel (CNRS) on Friday evening, and a closing keynote lecture will be delivered by Heather D. Baker (University of Toronto) on Saturday afternoon. The preliminary program is below and attached.

This event is open to all, with capped in-person seating allocation, on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration is required, both for in-person and Zoom attendance. Please RSVP to pavla.rosenstein@yale.edu to secure your place and receive the Zoom details. Non-Yale in-person attendees are subject to Yale’s Visitor Policy: https://covid19.yale.edu/visitors-policy

PROGRAM FOR THE 4th ANNUAL GSANES CONFERENCE: “COMMUNICATION”

Friday, March 4th

5:30 p.m. – 6:20 p.m.

Opening Keynote Lecture by Cécile Michel (CNRS)

Epistolary communication in Upper Mesopotamia and Anatolia during the early 2nd millennium BCE

6.30 p.m.

Reception (limited to 23 attendees due to Yale’s COVID-19 regulations)

Saturday, March 5th

9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

Registration and Breakfast

9.30 a.m. – 10.00 a.m.

Fiammetta Gori (University of Verona) - remote

Rethinking the numerical representation of subtractions in two Ebla accounts of metals with an insight into two Šuruppak sale contracts

10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Taha Yurttaş (Harvard University)

Where image and word meet: the Stele of Vultures

10:30 a.m.– 11:00 a.m.

Malath Feadha (University of Al-Qadisiyah) - remote

Texts of correspondence from the second year of Abi Sîn’s reign to city of Al Der

11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Coffee Break

11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Andrew Alberto Deloucas (Harvard University)

“I mustn’t make plentiful those who owe me a favor”: Situating Ikūn-Pîša’s Letters in Early Old Babylonian Political and Civic Systems

12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Matthias Adelhofer (University of Vienna) - remote

Time and Urgency in Old Assyrian Letters

12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Catered Lunch

1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Spencer Elliott (New York University)

“When a Strong Man Attacks Your Gates”: Prayer and Scribal Practice at Ugarit

2:00 p.m. – 2.30 p.m.

Louise Dorso (Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne) - remote

Communication between the Arabs and the Mesopotamian powers (9th-6th centuries BCE)

2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Chris Mezger (Yale University)

Language Change in the Wake of Conquest: Aramaic, Arabic, and the Historical Sociolinguistic Method

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Coffee Break

3.30 p.m – 4.20 p.m.

Closing Keynote Lecture by Heather D. Baker (University of Toronto) - remote

The MTAAC Project: Machine Translation and Automated Analysis of Cuneiform Languages

4.30 p.m.

Reception and group photo (limited to 23 attendees due to Yale’s COVID-19 regulations)

Type: 
NELC Sponsored Event
Open to: 
General Public