GoingToMeet

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing, poised between the return of the Games to Athens in 2004, and the future return to London in 2012, present a striking opportunity to reassess the role of the classical tradition in the modern, post-classical Olympic Games.Certain versions of a so-called Hellenic ideal have regularly been a feature of public discourse about the Olympics, and have occasioned much of the inventing of traditions that has surrounded the Games since their revival in the nineteenth century.Classical references were very visible in the 2004 Games, and the Athens celebrations were also accompanied by a number of books that together helped to redefine the understanding of the ancient games and their commemoration in poetry and pottery.The classical figures are considerably more muted in the publicity for the Beijing Games, so that it is legitimate to question how much and under what conditions the classical tradition has further relevance for contemporary Olympics, or contemporary Olympics for the classical tradition.

This interdisciplinary conference invites submissions that consider the versions of ancient Greece legible, or suppressed, in the iconography, histories, literature, and ceremonies, both official and unofficial, of the revived Olympic Games.