Attending the 2023 Presenting the Past Colloquium
Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 2023 Presenting the Past colloquium in Vancouver, hosted by Peopling the Past at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. I got to meet and hear from multiple scholars in and outside of academia (like me!) who are engaging in bringing the people of ancient world to the forefront of our studies of this era.
Left to right; Dr. Melissa Funke, Liv Albert, Flora Kirk (me), and Megan Lewis
This conference was organised by the Peopling the Past team, for the purpose of discussing best practices for responsible engagement with Ancient Mediterranean history. I was invited to attend and participate in a panel discussion with Liv Albert (Let's Talk About Myths, Baby!) and Megan Lewis (Digital Hammurabi), discussing our work and public engagement with the ancient world outside of traditional academia. It was wonderful to meet them both (as well as everyone else!) in person, as for the past several years our relationships have been restricted to social media. Plus, interacting in person fostered some delightful conversations and deep discussions that aren’t as easy to have via social media.
The Panel
Our panel was moderated by Dr. Melissa Funke (Peopling the Past) who led the conversation and asked us questions related to our projects' aims, challenges, success. I particularly liked our discussion around accessing academic resources as non-traditional educators – Even though I have several lovely friends I can ask to access JSTOR for me, I’ve always found it annoying that I cant just go and search the databases myself. Both Liv and Megan, without me even bringing it up, echoed this sentiment and I felt validated that it’s not just me being impatient! The inaccessibility of history resources is something that drives me mad, and really hinders authentic engagements with the ancient world.
Overall, my main takeaway from this session was a feeling of empowerment regarding my work and role in current historical reception. Since graduating university I have, not necessarily in a bad way, seen myself as part of a separate world to my friends still researching at academic institutions. However, the invitation to this colloquium, and then meeting with educators and researchers who have all used my work in their teaching/research, really made me feel reconnected. Hearing how Megan’s Sumerian resources are being translated into several languages, Liv’s episodes being assigned as learning resources, and my artworks being displayed in learning environments, affirmed the validity and importance of our (and all other ancient history creators I know!) contributions towards studies of the ancient world. I cannot thank the organisers of Peopling the Past enough for recognising our contributions to Ancient Mediterranean reception, and giving us a platform to meet and discuss!
Looking forward, I learned a lot from this panel and have developed some goals I would like to implement; primarily, being open for collaboration. Both Liv and Megan talked about having guests on their shows and how they use this to both learn more about specific topics, but also give researchers a platform. As an illustrator, most of my work process is very insular and I never really considered collaboration outside of commissions. However, as this colloquium proved, sometimes collaboration is exactly what you need to do to produce something excellent! For instance, I'm really not that knowledgeable about Ancient Egypt or the Assyria, and this hinders me as I don't want to illustrate something without proper research... yet I never have the time so I just stick to what I know (Rome and Greece). After I mentioned this, I had several people volunteer to help me with research/provide detailed backgrounds of subjects which was really touching. So looking forward I would like to maybe start reaching out to researchers and collaborating on illustrations!
Some Colloquium Highlights
The rest of the colloquium's talks were also fascinating, and covered a breadth of media and topics (you can read all the abstracts here!). I really enjoyed Heba Abd el Gawad's presentation on her current comic project with Nasser Junior for the Egypts Dispersed Heritage Project, which, using comics, confronts colonial practices and legacies within Egyptian collections by centring modern Egyptian voices. As I mentioned, researching responsible depictions of Ancient Egypt has been on my mind this year, so I really appreciated Heba sharing her thoughts on her relationship with her heritage and how this is often overlooked by Western reception. I also absolutely loved her quote during the discussion after (regarding how western sites are often full of "stay back" barriers and "no touching" signs);
"We [Egyptians] are not a community to stand and admire, we are a community to engage"
Continuing the Ancient Egyptian trend, Kyle Lewis Jordan discussed responsible curation and representation of body diversity in collections (particularly Ancient Egyptian) in his talk on Approaches to the Body and Disability in Museums. I was shocked to learn that Durham University's Oriental Museum has a mummy with a fused-to-the-bone prosthetic arm, which was cut off in the 70s for "research"? But I also loved learning about Seneb, an Old Kingdom court official, whose dwarfism is represented in his statues, which also follow Egyptian art practices. One statue with his wife and children shows him sitting cross-legged on a block of stone with his wife embracing him and his children standing below him where the legs of a full-size person would ordinarily have been. The composition of the scene thus achieves a harmonious symmetry.
I'd also like to thank Kyle for taking time to talk with me about responsible depictions of Hephaestus and Vulcan in contemporary art. I have yet to create Vulcan's bust in my Roman gods series and was waiting until I could do more research on this very subject. The topic came up because he shared this delightful kylix of Hephaestus in his winged chariot - I definitely will be incorporating as many of his 'marvellous machines' as I can in my illustration!
Hephaestus, tracing from red-figure kylix from ca. 500 BCE (accessed via the British Columbia/Yukon Open Authoring Platform)
While I've highlighted Heba and Kyle's talks, I must reiterate how much I enjoyed every single presentation throughout the three days! Everyone brought so much enthusiasm and insight to their projects and discussions.
Final Thoughts
What a week! I'll just say I have come back with much to think about, and lots of enthusiasm for how this experience will inform and better my art going forward. Online resources like Dr. Nadhira Hill’s resource-laden blog Notes from the Apotheke, and the Database of Religious History (presented by Gino Canlas) are already in my bookmarks for future research. Furthermore, I’m excited to potentially expand my art into the third dimension with projects like Alan Wheeler and Christine L. Johnston’s 3D printed and replica teaching resources.
I would like to thank the Peopling the Past team for inviting me to this wonderful colloquium!
Dr. Carolyn M. Laferrière
Dr. Chelsea A.M. Gardner
Dr. Christine L. Johnston
Dr. Megan Daniels
Dr. Melissa Funke
Dr. Sabrina C. Higgins
Dr. Victoria Austen
