A conference entitled:

'Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease and
Hygiene in Rome from Antiquity to Modernity';

organised by the
Department of Art History and Department of Classics will be held
at the British School at Rome, on 21-22 June 2007.

Further details can be found at:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/nirv/pollutionandpropriety/information.htm

This interdisciplinary conference will examine the significance of
pollution and cleanliness in the art, literature, philosophy, and
material culture of the city of Rome from antiquity through to the
twentieth century. Dirt, disease and pollution and the ways they are
represented and policed have long been recognised by historians and
anthropologists to occupy a central position in the formulation of
cultural identity, and Rome holds a special status in the West as a city
intimately associated with issues of purity, decay, ruin and renewal. In
recent years, scholarship in a variety of disciplines has begun to
scrutinise the less palatable features of the archaeology, history and
society of Rome. This research has drawn attention to the city's
distinctive historical interest in the recognition, isolation and
treatment of pollution, and the ways in which politicians, architects,
writers and artists have exploited this as a vehicle for devising
visions of purity and propriety.

It is hoped that this conference will be of interest to scholars working
in archaeology, cultural history, literature, art history, and the
history of medicine. The conference will aim to develop themes in the
history of the city of Rome, as well as providing a context for
examining general issues of pollution and purity. Papers will be
original and not previously published or delivered at a major
conference.

Organisers:
Dr Mark Bradley (Classics, Nottingham)
Prof Richard Wrigley (Art History, Nottingham)

Programme

Thursday 21 June

PANEL 1: Concepts of Pollution in Ancient Rome

Elaine Fantham (Classics, Princeton):
Passive and active pollution in Roman pagan tradition

Carlin Barton (History, Massachusetts):
Compassion and Purity: an Antithetical Pair?

Respondent: Val Curtis (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

PANEL 2: Pollution and Propriety in Ancient Urban Development

Penelope Davies (Art History, Austin):
Pollution, propriety and urbanism in Republican Rome

John Bodel (Classics, Brown):
Pollution at the Periphery: Living with the Dead in the Roman Suburbs

Respondent: Mark Bradley (Classics, Nottingham)

PANEL 3. Purity and Symbolism in Ancient Roman Waste Disposal

John Hopkins (Art History, Austin):
Marking Pollution: Material Evidence for Roman Conceptions of the Cloaca
Maxima

Gemma Jansen (Archaeology, Maastricht):
Divine help on a Roman toilet

Respondent: Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow (Classical Studies, Brandeis)

PANEL 4: Scapegoats and Heresy from Pagan Ritual to Early Christendom

Celia Schultz (Classics, Yale):
The Proper Disposal of a Polluting Presence

Katy Cubitt (Centre for Medieval Studies, York):
The jet-black spiderwebs of heresy: pollution and the language of heresy
in seventh- and eighth-century Rome

Friday 22 June

PANEL 5: Treatments of Plague.

Robert Arnott (Centre for the History of Medicine, Birmingham):
The Antonine Plague: fact and fiction

David Gentilcore (History, Leicester):
Negotiating medical remedies in time of plague: Rome, 1656

Respondent: François Quiviger (Warburg Institute, SAS)

PANEL 6: Pollution, the Body, and the Church

Conrad Leyser (History, Manchester):

‘Pornocracy’ and Professionalization:
The Roman Church in the Tenth Century

Alessio Assonitis (The Medici Archive Project, Florence):
The Miasma of Rome: Fra Girolamo Savonarola on the City of Popes and the
Urbs Antiqua

PANEL 7: Sanitation and Renovation from Early Modern Rome to Roma capitale

Part 1:

Kenneth Stow (Jewish History, Haifa):
Was the Ghetto Cleaner?

Katherine Rinne (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities,
Virginia):
Cleansing Counter Reformation Rome

Respondent: Pamela O. Long (Independent Scholar, Washington, D.C.)

Part 2:

Renato Sansa (Università G. D’Annunzio Chieti Pescara):
Playing Dirty: the social impact of legislation on dirt and cleanliness in
18th-century Rome

Taina Syrjämaa (School of History, University of Turku, Finland):
The clash of picturesque dirtiness and modern cleanliness in late
nineteenth-century Rome

Respondent: Richard Wrigley (Art History, Nottingham)

PANEL 8: Immorality and Deviancy

Dominic Janes (History of Art, Birkbeck):
`I hope the ladies present will forgive me’: Victorian clergy and the
erotics of Christian antiquities in Rome

Martina Salvante (European University Institute, Fiesole):
Delinquency and pederasty: ‘deviant’ youngsters in Rome’s working class
suburbs in the late 1920s

Plenary Lecture: Mary Douglas.

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