Shreyaa Patel

Dissertation Fellowship

2012-13 Report

Positions

• Doctoral Candidate at University of London

Summary of Progress, January 2012–March 2013

Substantial progress has been made over the past year. From January 2012 to September 2012 I drafted and finalised chapters 2, 3 and 4. From October 2012 to December 2012 I completed the introduction and conclusion chapters. The thesis abstract was also completed in December 2012 and approved by the examination board in early January 2013. I am currently in the final stages of preparing the thesis for submission (minor editing and proofreading). My official submission deadline is September 20th 2013 but I am aiming to submit in the next few months, hopefully by the end of April 2013.

Main Areas of Progress

The main area of progress I made last year was to do with the refinement of my central research questions. The first chapter of my thesis was greatly influenced by work on Gedächtnisgeschichte — namely Halbwachs' On Collective Memory (1992), Todorov's Les Abus de la Mémoire (1995), Marc Auge's Oblivion (2004), Assmann's thoughts on ‘normative’ and ‘formative’ memory (1997) and Hobsbawm's thoughts on tradition (1993). These theorists continued to shape my research last year, mainly because once I became aware of the idea of, for example, the ‘invention of tradition’ it became very difficult (and wholly uncritical) to think of tradition as a stable, natural or homogeneous criterion of knowledge. The following chapters thus continued to assess tradition and social memory as receptacles of divergent (and difficult) knowledge.

As a result of the connection between memory and tension (as explored in the first chapter of my thesis through an examination of social forgetting), I decided to change the central focus of my thesis to an analysis of conflict (rather than the analysis of time and place, which was the initial research proposal). My thesis title has been modified accordingly to: ‘Politics and Paradox in Tacitus' Annales 1–3: A Theoretical Analysis of Peacetime Conflict in Tiberian Rome.’ I describe conflict as ‘peacetime conflict’ in order to capture the idea of divergence and variance which was central to the first chapter — (memory as comforting and discomforting).

The four chapters of the thesis thus examine, from a theoretical perspective, Tacitus' writing of sources of social conflict. In chapter 1, I focussed on the problem of social memory (specifically, the memory of the Republican and Augustan pasts). In chapter 2, I focussed on the problem of democratic politics (that is, the drawbacks of a republican organisation of government). In chapter 3, I focussed on the problem of hierarchy and disciplina (in a specifically military context) and in the final chapter I analysed Tacitus' writing of the problem of the law and traditional mores (in particular, the lex maiestatis and moderatio). Ordinarily, we would be inclined to believe that it is these very structures of social organisation (memory, democracy, hierarchy, law, morals/customs) that ensure order in the state. However, since Tacitus writes these structures as sources of social tension, he reveals the fundamentally paradoxical nature of Roman peace institutions, since, while on the one hand the persistence of memoria and mores (as well as the rule of law and hierarchy) ensure peace and order, on the other hand my thesis has shown that they also source conflict (corruption, sedition, confusion). This reading of Tacitus allows us to view the Augustan peace in a different light. The peace of Augustus did certainly solve problems in his present, but at the same time, Tacitus suggests that it activated a new set of conflicts for future generations to solve.

Teaching

During the past year I also gained valuable teaching experience. From January to June I was Visiting Tutor at Royal Holloway, University of London. This position involved teaching two seminars for an Undergraduate course on Roman History from Augustus to Nero. At the same time I was studying for a Masters qualification in Teaching in Higher Education. This qualification will be obtained once I submit the final course assessment. I plan to submit this assessment (a dissertation of 5,000 words) once I have submitted the doctoral dissertation.

Conference Papers

I will be presenting a paper this July on Tacitus' writing of nostalgia. This paper is for a conference on Place and Space in Latin literature, to be held at King's College, London.

Plans for the coming year

At the moment I am working on finalising my dissertation for submission. Following that my aim is to start preparing proposals for a new project. One of the many benefits of the Memoria Romana project is that by placing an emphasis on analysing historical material from a theoretical perspective, the project dilutes some of the unnecessary boundaries between history and literature/history and theory which many readers of Tacitus continue to impose. Being part of the Memoria Romana project — attending the graduate workshops and conferences — has alerted me to the fundamental value of interdisciplinary and theoretical research in terms of how it can achieve the fundamental purpose of academia, which is to advance established perspectives and offer new, meaningful insights. Any future research I undertake will therefore maintain a focus on MR initiatives.