Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity

Call For Papers: 1)The Experience of Pain:Body, Sense, and Violence:The purpose of this session is to explore the intersections between the sensory experience of pain in antiquity, how pain writes itself on the body, and how the threat and experience of pain relates to violence. The nature of pain as an embodied experience has received much attention in scholarship, especially how pain can either (re-)construct the body (the positive value of pain) or deconstruct it (the negative value of pain), and how pain also functions in fashioning bodily narrative of the self and one's relation to others. This session especially invites papers exploring the following: a) whether pain is construed as a separate sense, or as part of touch, what role tactility (the capacity of touching or being touched) plays in the experience of pain, but also how pain relates to and/or affects, other senses; b) how the experience of pain shapes the body and the self, either in relation to the making of an individual pain narrative, changing the body physically (scarring, illness, disability), or the way in which pain is distinct from questions of identity around illness and disability c) how the experience or threat of pain effects social interaction between self and other, especially the fact that pain is often accompanied by discourses or practices of violence. Jointly sponsored with Senses and Culture and Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World. 2) An open session honoring the work of Judith Perkins, we invite paper proposals that think about narratives of violence. Papers might reflect on how narratives of violence shape collective identities, reclaim or incite trauma, justify further acts of violence, or (re)establish order or a voice in the wake of trauma. 3) A pre-arranged panel, co-sponsored with the AAR's Comparative Approaches to Religious Violence Unit, on Ellen Muehlberger's *Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity* (Oxford,2019).

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