Society for Classical Studies 157th Annual Meeting

JANUARY 7-10, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO

Call for Papers for an Organizer-Refereed Panel

Living, Laughing, Loving: Roman Elegy in Light of New Developments in Roman Comedy

Organized by Jay Houston (Princeton University) and Will Lewis (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

The genetic and generic connection between Roman elegy and Roman comedy has long been recognized (Yardley, Thomas, McKeown, Zagagi, Griffin), and more recent work has continued to elaborate upon this connection (e.g., James, Trinacty, Kella, Polt, Brecke). But the past two decades have seen a huge change in scholars’ understanding of Roman comedy as performance, literary, and social-historical work — a sea change that has not yet fully filtered into elegy studies. Comedy scholarship has increasingly challenged or reframed decades-old conventions and assumptions within the field, in areas as wide-ranging as gender and gendered violence (Dutsch, Witzke, Tran, Feltovich); enslavement (Richlin, Stewart); empire, colonialism, and identity (Leigh, Menon); religion (Padilla Peralta, Jeppesen, Gellar-Goad); metatheater and metagenre (Mazzara, Moodie); language, plotting, and scheming (Sharrock, Gunderson); and stagecraft and performance (Marshall, Goldberg, James & Moore, Gellar-Goad & Polt). This panel asks: how do recent findings in comedy affect our understanding of elegy, and what can they tell us about its generic and metageneric dynamics?

This panel will gather together papers that shed new light on Roman elegy through the lens of the new Roman comedy, as well as papers that uncover further connections between the two genres. Papers might examine questions and topics such as:

• How has our understanding of Roman elegy been changed or otherwise affected by recent developments in Roman comedy regarding performance, performance context, and their roles? What more can we learn about elegy when thinking about its performative dynamics?
• In what ways does elegy transform or retain comedy’s familiar characters, and how do the elegiac manifestations of these figures enrich our understanding of elegy, comedy, and their relationship with one another?
• How does metageneric awareness — either that of the writers or the audience — influence the composition and interpretation of elegy? How do the respective audiences of comedy and elegy and said audiences’ (potential) awareness of both genres influence the ways in which the two genre’s content, tone, and ideological positions are to be interpreted?
• Given the relationship and similarities between the two genres, how does familiarity with comedy as currently understood change the ways that Roman readerships receive and interpret elegy?
• In what ways do the specific social contexts of comedy and elegy change the works produced within them?
• What does comedy’s negotiation of its relationship with dominant ideologies tell us about elegy’s own negotiations of power and ideology in the age of Augustus?

Please send abstracts for a 15-20 minute paper by Friday, February 28, 2025 to info@classicalstudies.org with the subject heading “Living, Laughing, Loving: Roman Elegy in Light of New Developments in Roman Comedy.” Abstracts should be 500 words or fewer (excluding bibliography) and should follow the guidelines for individual abstracts (see the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts). The abstracts will be judged anonymously and so should not reveal the author’s name, but the email should provide name, abstract title, and affiliation. Decisions will be communicated to the abstracts’ authors by the end of March, with enough time that those whose abstracts are not chosen can participate in the individual abstract submission process for the upcoming SCS meeting.

Bibliography

Brecke, Iris. 2023. Ovid’s Terence: Tradition and Allusion in the Love Elegies and Beyond. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Dutsch, Dorota. 2008. Feminine Discourses in Roman Comedy: On Echoes and Voices. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dutsch, Dorota. 2012. “Genre, Gender, and Suicide Threats in Roman Comedy.” CW 105.2: 187–198.

Dutsch, Dorota. 2019. “On Mothers and Whores: Gender in Roman Comedy.” In The Cambridge Companion to Roman Comedy, ed. Martin Dinter, 200–216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feltovich, Anne. 2020. “Social Networking among Women in Greek and Roman Comedy.” CW 11.3: 249–278.

Gellar-Goad, T. H. M. 2013. “Religious Ritual and Family Dynamics in Terence.” In A Companion to Terence, edd. Antony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill, 156–174. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Gellar-Goad, T. H. M., and Christopher B. Polt. 2023. The Performance of Roman Comedy. National Endowment for the Humanities Institute for Higher Education Faculty.

Goldberg, Sander M. 2018. “Theater without Theaters: Seeing Plays the Roman Way.” TAPA 148.1: 139–172.

Griffin, Jasper. 1985. Latin Poets and Roman Life. London: Duckworth.

Gunderson, Erik. 2015. Laughing Awry: Plautus and Tragicomedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

James, Sharon L. 2003. Learned Girls and Male Persuasion: Gender and Reading in Latin Love Elegy. Berkeley: University of California Press.

James, Sharon L. 2012. “Elegy and New Comedy.” In A Companion to Roman Love Elegy, ed. Barbara K. Gold, 251–268. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.

James, Sharon L. 2019. “Repetition, Civic Status, and Remedy: Women and Trauma in New Comedy.” In Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome: Representations and Reactions, edd. Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi, 49–70. London: Routledge.

James, Sharon L., and Timothy J. Moore. 2012. Roman Comedy in Performance. National Endowment for the Humanities Institute for Higher Education Faculty.

Jeppesen, Seth A. 2020. “Religion in and around Plautus.” In A Companion to Plautus, edd. Dorota Dutsch and George F. Franko, 317–330. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Kella, Vassiliki. 2017. “Unmasking Hercules: Tracing Comedy in Propertius’ Fourth Book.” Phasis 20: 39–82.

Leigh, Matthew. 2004. Comedy and the Rise of Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Marshall, C. W. 2006. The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mazzara, Rachel. 2021. “Plautinopolis: Imagination and Representation in Plautus’ Roman Comedy.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto.

McKeown, J. C. 1979. “Augustan Elegy and Mime. PCPS 25: 71–84.

Menon, Deepti. 2020. “Travels through the Foreign Imaginary on the Plautine Stage.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Moodie, Erin K. Forthcoming. Comic Subversion: Metatheater in Athens, Rome, and Beyond.

Moore, Timothy J. 2012. Music in Roman Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Padilla Peralta, Dan-el. 2017. “Slave Religiosity in the Roman Middle Republic.” Classical Antiquity 36.2: 317–369.

Polt, Christopher B. 2021. Catullus and Roman Comedy Theatricality and Personal Drama in the Late Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Richlin, Amy. 2017. Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sharrock, Alison. 2009. Reading Roman Comedy: Poetics and Playfulness in Plautus and Terence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sharrock, Alison. 2021. “Amans et Egens and Exclusus Amator: The Connection (or not) between Comedy and Elegy.” In Greek and Latin Love: The Poetic Connection, edd. Thea S. Thorsen , Iris Brecke, and Stephen Harrison, 59–82. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Stewart, Roberta. 2012. Plautus and Roman Slavery. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Thomas, Richard F. 1979. “New Comedy, Callimachus, and Roman Poetry.” HSCP 83: 179–206.

Tran, Cassandra. 2022. “Gender Manipulation and Comic Identity in Roman Comedy.” Ph. D. dissertation, McMaster University.

Trinacty, Christopher V. 2017. “Tibullus’ Comedy: A note on Tib. 1.2.87–98.” Mnemosyne 70.6: 1051–1058.

Witzke, Serena S. 2020. “Gender and Sexuality in Plautus.” In A Companion to Plautus, edd. George Fredric Franko and Dorota Dutsch, 331–336. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Yardley, J. C. 1972. “Comic Influences in Propertius.” Phoenix 26.2: 134–139.

Zagagi, Netta. 1980. Tradition and Originality in Plautus: Studies of the Amatory Motifs in Plautine Comedy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.