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The King’s College London Latin Play returns after a five-year hiatus

Thu, 14 May 2026 12:34:39 GMT

Produced and performed in the original Latin (with English surtitles) by students from KCL, UCL and Birkbeck.

Booking required: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ahevents/2209281

For centuries, the gruesome story of Procne, Tereus and Philomena has inspired and appalled writers and artists. From its origins in Greek mythology via Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the tale was adapted into verse throughout the medieval period—by Chaucer, Boccaccio and Chrétien de Troyes among others, later inspiring one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest plots in Titus Andronicus. Taking inspiration from Seneca’s Roman tragedy Thyestes, Giorgio Correr’s Procne was composed in Venice in the early fifteenth century, adapting the story’s classical models of retributive fate within a Christian cosmology.

The production will explore this asynchronous reworking by setting the play in a medieval world reimagined through 21st-century aesthetics and technology. The play contends with the power of appearances, surveillance, voice and voicelessness—all themes that remain potent today. Staging Procne in 2026 in the original neo-Latin text, the production shows language at the edge of communicative breakdown: Procne demands that its audience question the limits of language, portraying a terrifying frontier where stories cannot be trusted and action cannot be hidden.

Teaching with Ovid: An online symposium, 12-13 June 2026

Tue, 12 May 2026 17:21:54 GMT

All are welcome to a free online conference organised by the International Ovidian Society and Societas Ovidiana, on the topic of teaching with Ovid. The conference is for anyone who uses Ovid in their teaching or is interested in doing so, including perspectives from Classics, Literature, History, teaching with special collections, using adaptations and retellings (from the Middle Ages to the modern stage) and more. We hope that it will be a generative space for educators across disciplines.

Please use the following link for the programme and registration information: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1un8bqocK0rvmueQkG34MizqwQOSVv3h_/view?usp=sharing.

SNLS Postgraduate Student and Early Career Scholars Event 2026

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 13:33:52 GMT

This year’s event for postgraduate students and early career scholars will take place on Friday, 20 March 2026 (online and kindly organized by Luke Houghton). This will be an opportunity for presenters from these career stages to share their latest research and receive feedback and for others to hear about recent research in Neo-Latin studies. Everyone is welcome! For registration and Zoom details please email the organizer Luke Houghton (at lhought2@ed.ac.uk).

Programme for 20 March 2026, 2–5pm GMT

2:00-2:10 pm Welcome (Gesine Manuwald, SNLS President, and Luke Houghton, organiser)

2:10-2:40 pm Jacopo Pesaresi (Bologna), 'Renewing Elegy: Basinio da Parma and the Early Humanist Reconfiguration of a Classical Genre'

2:40-3:10 pm Alex Tadel (Warwick), 'Mutua litterarum visitatio: Polissena Messalto Grimaldi's Corpus in the Context of Quattrocento Women's Latin Epistolography'

3:10-3:40 pm Miriam Boyes (York), 'Self-presentation and interlingual song exchange in Milton's Lycidas and Epitaphium Damonis'

3:40-3:50 pm break

3:50-4:20 pm Antonia Foggia (Innsbruck), 'Filtering Neo-Latin Through Cicero: Education and Authority'

4:20-4:50 pm Oscar Haines (St Andrews), 'Puritans, Playwrights, Polarisation: Antitheatrical Discourse and Political Factionalism in Pre-Civil War Academic Drama'

Latin responses to Horatian lyric, 1150 to the present

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:36:00 GMT

The inaugural event of the Canons of Latinity network will take place in Oxford in April. The topic of the conference is Latin responses to Horatian Lyric, 1150 to the present.

Dates: 16–17 April 2026.

Venue: Faculty of Classics, 66 St Giles', Oxford, OX1 3LU.

The full timetable may be found below; this will be an in-person event only and is free to attend. For further details and to register, please visit this link:

https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/event/latin-responses-to-horatian-lyric-1150-to-the-present

We hope that many of you will be able to join us.

With warmest wishes,

Tristan Franklinos and Stephen Harrison

TT Asst. Prof. of Latin, Ghent University

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 10:39:22 GMT

https://jobs.ugent.be/job/Ghent-Professor-in-Latin-literature-(BOF)-9000/1348553657/

"We are looking for a motivated, dynamic colleague with a broad view on classical studies to strengthen our education and research capacity in later Latin literature (medieval and/or early modern period). At Ghent University, the study of Latin literature, alongside Ancient Greek and several modern European languages and literatures, is housed within the department of Literary Studies. We teach Latin literature from the classical period through late antiquity to the Middle Ages, the humanist period and the later periods. Ghent’s thriving Latin studies are part of the departments of Literary Studies, History, Linguistics, Philosophy and Moral Sciences, and Archaeology. Four research groups are actively cooperating in various specialisations: GIKS (Classical Studies), GCLA (Late Antiquity), Henri Pirenne Institute (Medieval Studies) and GEMS (Early Modern Studies)."

"The position, funded by the Special Research Fund, is granted the privilege of focusing primarily on research for a period of 5 years. During that period the teaching load will be limited to no more than 8 ECTS credits per semester on average over a period of 3 years."

Society for Neo-Latin Studies Postgraduate and Early Career Research Event, March 2026: Call for Contributions

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 10:50:55 GMT

As in previous years, the Society for Neo-Latin Studies is organising an online event for PhD students and ECR colleagues. This will take place on Friday 20 March 2026, from 1 pm to 5 pm (UK time). It will consist of presentations on current Neo-Latin (or Neo-Ancient Greek) research projects by postgraduate students and early career researchers, and will provide an opportunity to share ideas and receive feedback from other scholars in the discipline. Abstracts of 150 words are invited for a presentation of no more than 15 minutes; these should be sent by 13 February 2026 to Luke Houghton (l hought2@ed.ac.uk), giving details of career stage (e.g. first-year PhD, post-doc). Please contact us in the meantime if you have any questions.

Call for Papers: Psalms and Paraphrases

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:32:08 GMT

The Book of Psalms is a little Bible, as Martin Luther famously wrote. It is also a rich poetry collection that has inspired authors and composers alike. The Psalms offered a model for private prayer, a prism for theological enquiry, the vehicle of scientific and encyclopaedic knowledge. Their enduring literary force challenged translators, poets and scholars to rework and revise their verses into different languages and formats.

This conference studies the ways in which paraphrases and translations of the Psalms functioned as literary exercises, interpretive statements, and educational tools. We invite contributions that explore the poetic, religious and intellectual negotiation of meaning in these texts, where Jewish poetics, Christian worldviews and classical forms come together. We also solicit insights in the original Hebrew text for a better understanding of the subsequent versions.

We welcome perspectives from transnational languages such as Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, and Byzantine Greek, as well as vernacular languages until 1800. Interdisciplinary approaches which discuss, for example, musical settings of or book historical questions related to relevant texts are equally welcome. Given the conference’s longue durée perspective, we encourage papers that deal with long-distance reception or cross-linguistic comparisons.

PRACTICAL
The conference takes place at KU Leuven, from 12-13 May 2026; accommodation costs will be covered by the organisation and (partial) compensation for travel costs is foreseen, especially for students and scholars with limited funds. Abstracts on the text, the translation and the rewriting of Psalms from their original composition until early modern times can be submitted to simon.smets@kuleuven.be by 15 January.

The conference is supported by KU Leuven Institute LECTIO and the FWO-funded Scientific Research Network Literatures without Borders.

Local organising committee: Dr Simon Smets, Prof. Dr Raf Van Rooy, Prof. Dr Reinhart Ceulemans, Prof. Dr Pierre Van Hecke

Call For Papers: Teaching with Ovid

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 12:55:58 GMT

Friday 12th - Saturday 13th June 2026

Multiple time zones: 9am-1 pm ET / 2-6pm BST

Online

The International Ovidian Society and the Societas Ovidiana welcome proposals for papers (15-20 mins), panels (1hr), or roundtables (1 hr) for an online pedagogy symposium.

We invite proposals on any aspect of teaching Ovid in the university or school classroom.

Proposals might consider, but are not limited to the topics of:

Classroom exercises based on Ovidian texts and themes (e.g. love; exile; epic; tragedy);
Teaching with Ovidian intermediaries (e.g. medieval moralised Ovids; early modern translations);
Using modern editions and or translations in the classroom;
Ovidian retellings in the classroom;
Teaching with the material text, archives, or library resources;
Language teaching with Ovid (e.g. Latin; medieval languages);
Producing creative responses to Ovidian texts and ideas.
The CFP deadline is Friday 16* January 2026.

Please send abstracts of c. 200 words with a brief author bio to rebecca.menmuir@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.

The symposium will be free to attend, but membership to the International Ovidian Society will be required. Visit https://ovidiansociety.org.

Conference: Neo-Latin and issues of style: places and periods 1450–1750

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 09:06:00 GMT

The Society for Neo-Latin Studies (SNLS) is organizing an international conference on Neo-Latin style, to be held in London on 18 and 19 September 2025.

The conference aims to take a more in-depth look at the question of ‘Neo-Latin style’ by asking the following questions: What is meant by ‘style’? What is the early modern and the contemporary terminology to describe this phenomenon? Is there such a thing as ‘Neo-Latin style’? What features of Neo-Latin texts need to be investigated to be able to define their ‘style’? Does the style of Neo-Latin texts develop over the period traditionally defined as that of Neo-Latin literature and, if so, how? Are there any noticeable stylistic differences between texts in prose and in verse and between texts of literary genres? What is the relationship between ‘style’ and translation? How might ‘Neo-Latin’ style differ from the style of classical antiquity? Can one discern any patterns in the use or imitation of particular classical and / or other contemporary authors? Does style differ between texts produced in different countries (by writers with different vernaculars as their native languages)? How might modern research tools and methods (e.g. access to digitized and searchable texts, databases, digital humanities) contribute to research on Neo-Latin style? What has the subject already achieved in terms of research on Neo-Latin style (for instance, the recent research network on ‘Baroque Latinity’) and what would be projects for the future? These (and other) questions will be looked at in broader overviews or by means of individual case studies.

A provisional programme is available here.

All welcome! Please register here to attend by 11 September (free of charge).

Vates journal new edition

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 19:45:28 GMT

Vates issue 15 (first issue of the revived journal) is now published online; a copy can be found here.