IMC 2021: Sessions

Session 1819: Erasure in Late Antiquity, IV: The Agency of Erasure

Sponsor:	Postgraduate & Early-Career Late Antiquity Network
Organisers:	Kay Boers, Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies, Universiteit Utrecht Becca Grose, Departement Geschiedenis en Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit Utrecht
Moderator/Chair:	Michele R. Salzman, Department of History, University of California, Riverside
Respondent:	Alexandra Walsham, Department of History, University of Exeter
Paper 1819-a	The Invisible Chisel: Political Disgrace and Agency in Epigraphic Erasures (Language: English) Rebecca Usherwood, School of Classics, University of St Andrews Index terms: Epigraphy, Mentalities, Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 1819-b	Myths in Their Final Stage of Degeneracy: Nonnus, Poetry, and Scholarly Erasure (Language: English) Guy Walker, Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Language and Literature - Greek
Abstract	This panel addresses the agency of erasure: who commissioned it, who carried out, who interprets it as erasure. Usherwood examines the commissioners and executors of 4th-century epigraphic erasures. To complete the panel and strand, Walker considers the role of modern scholars in the act of erasure, using Nonnus to argue that disciplinary categorisation and exclusion actively erase elements that do not fit their visions of Late Antiquity.