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Meeting Program Units

2024 Annual Meeting

San Diego, California

Meeting Begins11/23/2024
Meeting Ends11/26/2024

Call for Papers Opens: 1/24/2024
Call for Papers Closes: 3/20/2024

Requirements for Participation

Ancient Education: Social, Intellectual, and Material Contexts


Program Unit Type: Consultation
Accepting Papers? Yes

Call For Papers: The Ancient Education Program Unit invites paper proposals for two open-call sessions. The unit will also sponsor an invited book-review panel. Both open calls are capacious in terms of chronology, geography, religious context, language, and methodology. Papers will be twenty minutes long, followed by ten minutes of discussion.

(1) Legal Education: This session (co-sponsored with the Biblical Law Program Unit) will focus on legal education in antiquity. We invite papers that explore legal education, the transmission of legal knowledge, and the place of law within broader educational contexts and institutions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Topics that could be addressed include (but are not limited to): legal education in the training of scribes in Mesopotamia, Israel, and other parts of the ancient Near East; legal education and the transmission of legal tradition in ancient Judaism; legal education and judicial training in the Persian Empire; the relationship between legal education and rhetorical training in the Hellenistic and Roman world; and methodologies in Roman schools of law. 

(2) Natural History: How was knowledge about “natural history” — including subjects such as cosmology, geography, topography, paradoxography, and ethnography — created, organized, and taught in Mediterranean antiquity? To what extent was “natural history” a category of learning and knowing? Given the apparent absence of these subjects from ancient curricula, how might we explain the widespread transmission of scientific concepts and their integration with other forms of knowledge? Other potential topics include the transmission, use, and suitability for teaching of works about natural history; the relationship between education and the representation of nature in art; and the role of public lectures, sermons, and demonstrations in imparting and shaping such knowledge.

Program Unit Chairs

Jeremiah Coogan
Monika Amsler

Propose a Paper for this Program Unit

If you are a SBL member, you must login before you can propose a paper for this or any other session. Please login by entering your SBL member number on the left in the Login box.

For all other persons wanting to propose a paper, you must communicate directly with the chair of the program unit to which you want to propose. Chairs have the responsibility to make waiver requests, and their email addresses are available above. SBL provides membership and meeting registration waivers only for scholars who are outside the disciplines covered by the SBL program, specifically most aspects of archaeological, biblical, religious, and theological studies.

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