Wednesday 27 November 2024 4:00 pm
Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, Via Garibaldi 31
Free entry
The seminar will be held in English.
Circolo Gianicolense is a joint seminar series for fellows at three foreign research institutions at the Gianicolo: The Norwegian Institute in Rome, The American Academy in Rome, and Institutum Romanum Finlandiae. This seminar will include the following two talks:
Death and Difference in Late Antiquity
Dr. Irene Selsvold, Postdoctoral fellow, Norwegian Institute in Rome
Selsvold studied Classics, History and Archaeology at the Universities of Oslo and Bergen, and finished her PhD at the University of Gothenburg in 2019. In recent years, she has been a postdoctoral fellow shared between the universities of Gothenburg and Leicester, while teaching and supervising students in Oslo and Gothenburg. Her PhD focused on the use and reuse of pagan material culture in the form of statues and temples when urban areas were christened. Her latest research deals with the relation between christianity and changes in funerary practices in Late Antiquity. Her latest publication will be published later this year: «Archaeological Perspectives on Burial Practices and Societal Change: Death in Transition» (Routledge, Open Access).
Mark Your Calendars: Evidence for Seasonality in Mithras-Worship
Brigitte Keslinke, PhD Candidate, American Academy in Rome
Keslinke is a PhD candidate in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Graduate Group at the University of Pennsylvania and a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy. Her PhD study “The Making of a Meal” seeks to recontextualize Mithraic cult through a comparative study of its most fundamental ritual—the communal meal—and investigates the extent to which the cult was shaped by the communities into which it was introduced. Her study presents an opportunity to reconsider the role of food in Roman religion and the ways in which it allowed people to make meaning in sacred spaces vis-à-vis their own consumption practices and preferences. The result will be the first comprehensive study of sacrifice and feasting in the cult of Mithras, one that engages and contributes to broader discussions on community construction and ritual transmission.
Image: Nida-Heddernheim, Relief Vermaseren 1960, Figure 274.
