Address: Dipartimento di Lettere – Via Tommaso Gar, 14, 38122, Trento
Speaker: Ben Cassell (King’s College London)
Discussants: Elena Franchi, Anna Novokhatko (UniTn-Dipartimento di Lettere)
While modern studies on Greek Religion evidently strive to incorporate a consideration of women’s role in state and local cult, they often drift into the broad and unsatisfying category of ‘Female Festivals’. In this presentation, two brief case studies aligned with the escalating application of theories derived from the Cognitive Science of Religion and Embodied Cognition in the study of ancient religion, considers how particular ritual actions and experiences would inherently impact their performers. A key facet here is how religious experience aided in generating and transmitting Cultural Memory, and how these memories shaped those experiences in turn. This seminar will examine haptic, kinaesthetic, and cognitive aspects of three brief case studies: Panathenaic kanephoroi, the ‘swinging maidens’ of the Aiora, and the women of the Thesmophoria. This approach will not only aid in developing a clearer understanding of how these differing rites would facilitate the adoption of an embodied understanding of myth, morality and female sophrosyne (self-control), but likewise underline the importance and agency women had within the religious life of their community.
Ben Cassell is a PhD candidate with the Department of Classics, King’s College London, where his thesis research intersects the emerging application of cognitive approaches to ancient Greek religion with a consideration of Cultural Memory in these processes. He is the author of several articles and volume chapters, while acting as an editor for the Journal of Cognitive Histography. He is the winner of the Grote Prize in Ancient History 2024.
