Jessica Hughes

Research Grantee

2012-13 Report

Positions

• The Open University

Publications and papers presented at conferences

1. Paper presented: “A Farewell to Arms: Votive Body Parts and Rites of Passage in Hellenistic Italy”, Bodies of Evidence Conference, British School at Rome, 6 June 2012.
2. Paper presented: “A volte ritornano: teorie e metodi della ricezione del mondo classico nell'arte', University of Naples ‘Federico II’, 19 March 2012
3. Editor: 2012 edition of journal Practitioners' Voices in Classical Reception Studies, http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/pvcrs/2012
4. Organizer: The Classical Body, a conference held at The Open University, February 2 2013

Publications in preparation and in press:

1. Hughes, J. (in prep.) The Anatomy of Ritual: Votive Body Parts in the Greco–Roman World (forthcoming 2014).
2. Hughes, J. and Buongiovanni, C. (eds.) (in prep.) Remembering Parthenope: Receptions of Classical Naples from Antiquity to the Present (forthcoming 2014, Oxford, OUP)
3. Hughes, J. 2013a (in press). “The Biography of a Votive Offering from Hellenistic Italy&rdauo;, in Weinryb, I. (ed.) Ex Voto: Votive Images Across Cultures. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.
4. Hughes, J. 2013b (in press). “Memory and the Roman viewer: looking at the Arch of Constantine”. In: Galinsky, Karl ed. Memoria Romana: Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.

Work Done with Funding from Memoria Romana

The primary outcome of my work on the Memoria Romana project is the final item in the list of publications above —an article for the MAAR volume which essentially explores the question of what memory can bring to the table of Roman spolia studies. However, work on the project has also informed several other outputs, including my forthcoming monograph on anatomical votives, in which the concept of viewer memory has become a central methodological tool. This year I have also developed some MA level teaching material based on some of the research undertaken on the MR project (this material introduces Classical Studies graduate students to Collective Memory studies through the work of Aleida Assmann and Yael Zerubavel, encouraging them to think about how debates taking place in other, interdisciplinary fields might inform their work on the ancient past). I am also in the process of developing future research projects that build on the foundations of my work on the Memoria Romana project. I am particularly interested in exploring further the opportunities for (and challenges of) interdisciplinary exchange between humanities subjects and the cognitive sciences, and I am currently exploring the possibility of setting up a collaborative research project on this theme that would build on some the pioneering work that I have encountered through my involvement with the Memoria Romana project.