CONFERENCE MODEL

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A conference model

for our times?

Scholars in Humanities are seldom trained to collaborate in their research. At least in the English-speaking world, they are assessed until doctorate and beyond (almost) entirely as individuals in isolation. Most will expect to teach in a university department as the only specialist in their field. In the average-sized department, if there are two specialists in (say) Virgil or Sparta, there may appear to be an over-concentration, with no specialist perhaps to teach (say) Silver Latin literature, or the history of Athens. Lucky, then, the scholar with a fellow specialist colleague at hand, with whom to discuss.

The problem here crudely outlined is deepening, and will deepen further as specialisms themselves deepen and grow further apart. To use the same two examples: 40 years ago there were Sparta specialists; now there are specialists in Archaic Sparta, Spartan art, Spartan ideology, 5th-century Sparta, 4th-century Sparta, Hellenistic Sparta, Roman Sparta … capable (shall we say) of learning a surprising amount from each other. In Virgilian studies divisions of a less tractable kind exist, as around the question whether the poet’s work should be treated as reflecting political intentions, and if so which. Such divergences of subject and method may be compounded by differences of temperament. In short, the average-sized department may often be inhospitable to specialist discussion in ways impossible to rectify by a purely local initiative.

As specialisms within the study of Antiquity become deeper and more separate, what is common knowledge or method in one field may become a rare and valuable aperçu in another. The Celtic Conference in Classics (CCC) is structured to promote cross-fertilisation between separate fields. This is the reason for the CCC’s tradition of having all sessions begin and end at the same moment, with a few minutes free for migration between panels. The aim, however, is not simple `interdisciplinarity’ – `all “inter” and no “discipline” ’, according to the caricature. It is to transmit specialist knowledge between specialisms: to invent a term, ‘condisciplinarity’.