Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CARMEN (Communal Art - Reconceptualising Metrical Epigraphy Network)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-10-01 bis 2022-09-30
Until 2024, eleven doctoral students will be trained in the "Communal Art – Reconceptualising Metrical Epigraphy Network" (CARMEN). Ancient historians, philologists, and archaeologists will research poetry as a part of Roman everyday culture. Verses are inscribed on funerary monuments and other objects. They document changes in social relations and the development of language, and they characterize aesthetic notions in Rome and the provinces from the third century BCE to the seventh century CE. The research and training group consisting of the ESRs, the supervisors, and the co-supervisors focuses on Latin verse inscriptions, Carmina Epigraphica. Long-awaited editions of such inscriptions from the city of Rome and some of the North African regions shall be published in digital form. With a complex and integrated methodology that draws on the application of best practice in the involved disciplines and incor¬porates approaches from relevant adjacent fields, we tackle the following three research objectives: 1) identifying regional specifics of and conditions for the production and display of verse inscriptions in the Roman Empire and its immediate successors from c. 300 BCE to 600 CE, 2) laying foundations for an inclusive perspective of societal diversity based on a deeper understanding of the connection between Roman poetry and its visualised cultural expressions, 3) analysing aesthetic standards in historical and contemporary contexts.
Widespread notions of hierarchies of art and aesthetic standards are one of the last bastions of the exclusive and colonial view on human abilities that CARMEN seeks to attack: art production of the Ancient world. Poems and their musical counterparts, songs, are profoundly democratic by nature – in ancient and modern cultures alike. Our CARMEN research projects are part of an academic and societal discourse about the forms of expression, practices, relevance, and esteem of popular culture. The immediate impact of and the tensions arising from judgements about popular culture are particularly evident in modern cultural politics and funding of the arts. Focusing on the artistic folklore of the Roman Empire, the results of CARMEN will contribute to the scientific basis for an inclusive, decolonised discourse on art and aesthetics. It will foster the discussion of notions of quality, beauty, and evaluation criteria independent of the social class of authors and artists.
Apart from this exciting and socially relevant task of CARMEN and the individual ESR projects, an essential goal is to train eleven excellent young people for the Europe of tomorrow. For this purpose, they receive permanent support in three areas: they acquire and develop 1) specific research qualification, as each ESR is responsible for one project and the dissemination of its results, 2) academia-related qualification, as the network structure, interdisciplinary cooperation and the variety of meth¬odological approaches convey strong academic competences beyond the field of the project, and 3) transferable skills including support in individual career plan¬ning. Moreover, all ESRs benefited from two-month internships outside academia where they came to know perspectives for their personal future other than university.
Widespread notions of hierarchies of art and aesthetic standards are one of the last bastions of the exclusive and colonial view on human abilities that CARMEN seeks to attack: art production of the Ancient world. Poems and their musical counterparts, songs, are profoundly democratic by nature – in ancient and modern cultures alike. Our CARMEN research projects are part of an academic and societal discourse about the forms of expression, practices, relevance, and esteem of popular culture. The immediate impact of and the tensions arising from judgements about popular culture are particularly evident in modern cultural politics and funding of the arts. Focusing on the artistic folklore of the Roman Empire, the results of CARMEN will contribute to the scientific basis for an inclusive, decolonised discourse on art and aesthetics. It will foster the discussion of notions of quality, beauty, and evaluation criteria independent of the social class of authors and artists.
Apart from this exciting and socially relevant task of CARMEN and the individual ESR projects, an essential goal is to train eleven excellent young people for the Europe of tomorrow. For this purpose, they receive permanent support in three areas: they acquire and develop 1) specific research qualification, as each ESR is responsible for one project and the dissemination of its results, 2) academia-related qualification, as the network structure, interdisciplinary cooperation and the variety of meth¬odological approaches convey strong academic competences beyond the field of the project, and 3) transferable skills including support in individual career plan¬ning. Moreover, all ESRs benefited from two-month internships outside academia where they came to know perspectives for their personal future other than university.
Eleven ESRs from six countries have started their research projects at eight European institutions and universities between 1 April 2021 and 1 October 2021. Despite the pandemic situation and some small delays and postponements, we have now been able to implement almost all activities planned for the first period. We started with the conceptual planning required for coordination and proceeded with continuous monitoring, and the ESRs have received our support from individually tailored career mentoring to diligent and intense research supervision. The ITN-management at JGU Mainz documented the recruitment process, the research-related training units and the non-research-related two-month internships. The CARMEN project and all ESRs are promoted on the website. Continuous reports are published in our newsletters for the broader public. All workshops, seminars, conferences, and individual training activities are documented on the website and can be traced in the EU reporting portal. These activities focused on the following topics: a) text editions (Editing texts, Sevilla 2021; Editing Latin inscriptions, Berlin 2022; Autopsy, Vienna 2022); b) digital skills (Data Structure and Linked Open Data, Rome 2022; Digital Editing and Annotating: Verse Encoding in Epidoc, London 2022); c) cultural heritage (Objects of the Past – presentation and museology, Mérida 2021; Cultural heritage – exhibition concepts and museology, Madrid 2022); d) aesthetics of inscribed poetry (Sociolinguistics, Rome 2022; Manuscript studies, Rome 2022); e) diversity and intercultural competence (Kiel 2020; a workshop with excursion in Tunisia is planned for 2023).
Our well-designed dissemination and communication activities outside the narrower scientific environment, however, have fallen by the wayside. Only a few outreach activities were possible, and we intend to do more in this regard in 2023/2024. A podcasted poetry slam is planned for April and a presentation of the CARMEN project and interim results of the ESRs is envisaged for an exhibition in late summer 2023.
Our well-designed dissemination and communication activities outside the narrower scientific environment, however, have fallen by the wayside. Only a few outreach activities were possible, and we intend to do more in this regard in 2023/2024. A podcasted poetry slam is planned for April and a presentation of the CARMEN project and interim results of the ESRs is envisaged for an exhibition in late summer 2023.
The ESRs have presented their first promising interim results at international conferences and project-related workshops. First working papers of ESR-presentations at events of the CARMEN-consortium will be published in the first months of 2023. Some ESRs have already received a positive review of the papers they submitted for conference publications and one poster was accepted for presentation at the International Epigraphy Conference, which takes place every five years (Bordeaux, 2022). The project coordinator has presented the CARMEN project and the potential of its overall objective and the individual research projects in Paris which will be published in a refereed journal in 2023.
In fact, individual "nuggets" of information have already come to light during the intensive study of the material, but these aspects still need to be contextualised by the doctoral students. However, we highly recommend reading our newsletters, which are incredibly stimulating and reflect the team's fun of working together, its scientific curiosity, and its European-international sense of community.
As the framework is in place and the CARMEN approach is on everyone's mind, there is no doubt that our ITN CARMEN will contribute to unearthing the very roots of European cultural heritage and will help to establish a contem¬porary, non-elitist, tolerant European view on our culture, both ancient and modern.
In fact, individual "nuggets" of information have already come to light during the intensive study of the material, but these aspects still need to be contextualised by the doctoral students. However, we highly recommend reading our newsletters, which are incredibly stimulating and reflect the team's fun of working together, its scientific curiosity, and its European-international sense of community.
As the framework is in place and the CARMEN approach is on everyone's mind, there is no doubt that our ITN CARMEN will contribute to unearthing the very roots of European cultural heritage and will help to establish a contem¬porary, non-elitist, tolerant European view on our culture, both ancient and modern.