Gender Numismatics - Fluid Identities and Ancient Coinage
International Workshop November 29-30, 2018
Recent archaeological studies have acknowledged that the function and meaning of ancient material culture is both resulting in and generative of habits, values, norms, and behaviors in a given society requiring a new set of interpretative methodologies. To that end, gender studies can become part of the research agenda.
In one particular area of ancient, especially Greco-Roman material culture, these research strands have not received the attention they deserve: coinage. Yet, the polyvalence of ancient coins provides an unequalled opportunity to enhance our understanding of the complexity and dynamics of gender roles in the Mediterranean World. As medium of exchange (in embedded and disembedded economies alike), of communication, or of power and authority on practical and symbolic levels they express and forge identities in different ways. The interplay of image, text, and materiality offers an excellent framework within which to study how coins operate between the single person and society at large with all the various transactions this entails.
The international workshop ‘Gender Numismatics. Fluid Identities and Ancient Coinage’ seeks to investigate the above mentioned dynamics, whether they are normative or deviant. While the archaeological evidence will take center stage, we aim more generally at exploring the potential of gendered perspectives as critical tools for analyzing ancient coins. For instance, how did coin imageries negotiate gender roles and how did the use of coins in ritual deposits or as jewelry, to name but a few cases, deploy or change ideas of gender? To this purpose, we propose to work with a broad idea of gender including conceptions of age, class, and ethnicity (which can already be gendered as such).
Our aim is to discuss each paper diachronically and from different perspectives. Archaeologists, numismatists, anthropologists, art historians, classicists, and historians are invited to present their research and thus actively contribute to this timely topic. Beside specific case studies, we explicitly welcome papers on comparative approaches or methodology more generally.
PROGRAMME
Thursday, November 29
14.30 Welcome and opening remarks Panel 1: Approaching women in numismatics
15.00 Fleur Kemmers (Frankfurt): Whose coins? Tracing female agency in monetary practices in the roman world
15.30 Sven Günther (Changchun): Creating Narratives of Female Identities. Roman Imperial Women in the Chinese-English Exhibition Project „Women Rule the (Roman) World? Female Portraits on Roman Imperial Coins“
16:00 Coffee and tea
16.30 Lin Foxhall (Liverpool): Cash in hand: was the use of coinage and money in the Greek world gendered?
18:00 Reception at the Museum and opening of the exhibition
Friday, 30 November
Panel 2: Making the gendered body on/with coins
09:30 Annika Backe-Dahmen (Berlin): Kinder auf römischen Münzen - Münzen für römische Kinder
10:00 Mali Skotheim (Wisconsin-Madison): Gendered Celebration. The Male Athletic Body on Roman Imperial Festival Coinage
10:30 Claudia Perassi (Milan): Roman coin jewels. Who wears what?
11:00 Coffee and tea Panel 3: Striking difference. Iconography and typology against the grain
11:30 Elisabeth Günther (Berlin): „Männliche“ Kaiserfrauen - „weibliche“ Kaiser? Reverstypen und Hybridprägungen als fließende Bereiche von Rollenzuschreibung in der römischen Kaiserzeit
12:00 Filippo Carlà-Uhink (Heidelberg): Galliena Augusta and Sol Invicta: Transgender Dynamics in Roman Numismatics
12:30 Lunch
Panel 4: Coining power? The gendered numismatics of empire
14:00 Gunnar Dumke (Halle): Basilissa, not maharani. „Greek“ queens in the Hellenistic Far East
14:30 Roberta Stewart (Dartmouth College): Vesta‘s cup?
15:00 Barbara Hiltmann (Lausanne): Women and men on provincial coinage of Roman Phrygia: the cases of Acmonea and Eucarpea
15:30 Coffee and tea 16:00 Concluding remarks/discussion 17:00 Farewell dinner
Venue:
Ernst von Sieglin Lecture Theatre (165)
Institut für Klassische Archäologie
Schloss Hohentübingen, Burgsteige 11, 72070 Tübingen
Germany
Contact:
+49 (0) 7071-29 78546