Programme

Passages from Ancient to Medieval and Early Modern Societies IX

VIOLENCE, WAR, AND SUFFERING

Tampere University, 13–15.8 2025

 

(This programme is still preliminary, updated February 14th 2025)

WEDNESDAY (13.8.2025)

Session 1 (13.00-15.30, room B1100) Welcome & opening words & Keynote presentation: Justine Firnhaber-Baker (University of St. Andrews): Suffering the Unimaginable: Affective Responses to Warfare in an Age of Plague

Coffee (15.30-16.00)

Session 2a (16.00-17.30, room B1096): War, identity, ethnicity

Jussi Rantala (Tampere University): Conquest and Identity: War, Violence, and Italian Peoples in Livy’s Ab urbe condita

Iida Laurén (University of Helsinki): Violence amongst Jews in Graeco-Roman Antiquity

Claire Fauchon-Claudon (ENS de Lyon): Suffering in Flesh and Soul in Syriac Documentation: Violence, War and Ethnicity between the Roman and Persian Empires (1st century AD – 7th century AD)

Session 2b (16.00-17.30, room B1097): Women under the threat of violence

Vasiliki Kousoulini (University of Patras) and Georgia Dimopoulou (University of Patras): Trust and Disgust after the Fall of Troy: A Study of Violence in Euripides’ Hecuba and Trojan Women

Marja-Leena Hänninen (University of Helsinki): The family of Germanicus at the front lines of the Roman empire: women, children and lineage as tools of crisis management

Joanna Vadenbring (independent): ‘There is so much illness and death here’. Women, children and suffering during the Scanian War 1676-79

Reception at Tampere University 18.00

THURSDAY (14.8.2025)

Session 3a (9.00-10.30, room B1096): Violence towards non-combatants

Milan Vukašinović (Uppsala University): Between Collective and Individual Affects: Subject-Making in Eustathios’ Narrative of the Capture of Thessaloniki

Juho Wilskman (independent): Treatment of Non-Combatants in the Aegean Region at the Turn of the 13th and 14th Centuries

Taneli Puputti (University of Jyväskylä): Use of violence and suffering in the humanistic historiography – The Siege of Brescia in 1438

Session 3b (9.00-10.30, room B1097): Emotions and violence

Rosie Wyles (University of Durham): Euripides’ Phoenician Women: the emotions of a family at war

Tuomo Nuorluoto (Institutum Romanum Finlandiae): Grief, anger, and pity: Violent death and its emotional consequences in Latin funerary inscriptions

Maria Julku (University of Oulu): Violence as a Communal Experience During Johannes Messenius’ Imprisonment

Coffee (10.30-11.00)

Session 4 (11.00-12.15, room B1100) Keynote presentation: Marian Füssel (University of Göttingen): Feelings in a World on Fire: Doing Emotions during the Seven Years War

Lunch (12.15-13.30)

Session 5a (13.30-15.00, room B1096) Violence in the domestic space

Alessandro Vatri (Durham University): Ripped earrings and gendered double-standards in classical Greece

Sofia Vierula (University of Helsinki): Sic Formosa Fuit – Domestic Violence and Women’s Suffering in Roman Poetry

Anna-Liisa Rafael (University of Helsinki): Balancing Cruelty and Care: Medieval Portrayals of Jewish Mothers and their Child Sacrifices in Times of War

Session 5b (13.30-15.00, room B1097) Responses to War and Violence

Sini Kangas (Tampere University): The View of the Aggressors in Twelfth-century Sources of the Crusades: Authorial Responses

Irit Kleiman (Boston University): On Painted Eggs, and other Metonymies of Survival

Mari Välimäki (University of Turku): Experiences of War in the 17th Century Academic Community in Turku, Sweden

Coffee (15.00-15.30)

Session 6a (15.30-17.00, room B1096) Structures of violence and suffering

Katariina Mustakallio (Tampere University): Grain Shortage and Hunger: Roman Measures Against Food Shortages in the Roman Port Area

Samuli Simelius (University of Helsinki): Inequality and Violence: Roman Urban Case Studies

Jenni Lares (Tampere University): Drunken violence and emotions in early modern Finland

Session 6b (15.30-17.00, room B1097) Experiences and politics of violence

Anthony Mulligan (Macquarie University): Sullam nemo non oderit – How Emotions Fuelled Sulla’s Thirst for Revenge

Jamie Vesterinen (University of Helsinki): Violent actions as a source of bad dreams and nightmares in ancient literature

Susanna Niiranen (Tampere University): Killing St Olaf – Weapons of Martyrdom

City walk (not yet confirmed)

Conference dinner

 

FRIDAY (15.8.2025)

Session 7 (9.00-10.15, room B1100)

Keynote presentation: Edith Hall (Durham University): Women under Siege: the Trauma of the Chorus of Aeschylus’ “Seven against Thebes”

Coffee (10.15-10.45)

Session 8 (10.45-12.45, room B1100): The Suffering Male Body in Western Art and Culture

Elina Pyy (University of Helsinki):  Seneca on screen: Graeco-Roman tragedy and the aesthetics of violence in contemporary cinema

Jaakkojuhani Peltonen (Tampere University): Masculinity and the Experience of Pain in Roman Literature: The Case of Regulus and Its Reception

Henna Ala-Lehtimäki (Turun yliopisto): “How to Jest on Great Men’s Little Weaknesses” – Ridiculing the Trojan War in 19th Century English Comedy

Ville Hakanen (University of Helsinki ):  The Suffering of Laocoon and the Image of a Finnish Hero

Concluding Remarks and Discussion (12.45 – 13.15)

 

Programme as a pdf -file:

Passages from Ancient to Medieval and Early Modern Societies IX_ program_16.3.25