Call for Papers 17th Freiburg (Groningen) Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry 

Inscriptional Poetry of the Hellenistic age 

Wednesday-Friday 23-25 September 2026, Freiburg im Breisgau

The Seminar für klassische Philologie at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg announces the seventeenth workshop in the series formerly known as the “Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry”, now for the first time to be organised in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany on 23-25 September 2026. The theme of this workshop will be Inscriptional Poetry of the Hellenistic age.

Inscriptional poetry of the Hellenistic era is an under-exploited resource for expanding our understanding of Hellenistic literature, society and culture. With its direct connection to specific material contexts, its embeddedness within local history, religion and culture, and its direct link to the lives of individuals otherwise unknown, inscribed poetry offers a precious window onto the Hellenistic world. Moreover, studying inscribed texts allows us to move beyond core centers of poetic patronage and learning (including Alexandria) to gain insight into the whole range of literary experience and experimentation across the Hellenistic world. This corpus, in short, can both challenge and enrich our understanding of the literature of this era.

Although some inscriptional poetry has been studied in depth, a lot still remains under the radar. In this iteration of the Hellenistic Workshop, we therefore invite papers on (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Previously understudied Hellenistic inscriptional poetry

• The parallels and contrasts between ‘literary’ and ‘inscribed’ poetry

• The interplay between inscribed poetry and its material and social context(s)

• The aesthetic qualities of inscribed Hellenistic poetry

• Inscriptional poetry’s engagement with the (literary) past

• Inscribed poetry’s experimentation with narrative voice and with poetics

• The intersection of inscriptional poetry and:

  • Gender and its representation

  • Ethnic Identities and global connectedness

  • Religion, Devotion and Cult

  • Politics and Power

We welcome further suggestions along these lines.

Scholars wishing to contribute a paper to the workshop are requested to send an e-mail to jacqueline.klooster@altphil.uni-freiburg.de with the title of their paper and a brief abstract (1 page) by 31 October 2025. On acceptance, you will be asked to send a PDF of the complete text of the paper by 1 May 2026, so that it can be distributed among the participants well in advance of the workshop. During the workshop itself there will be time for a short introduction (ca. 10 minutes) followed by extensive discussion of the paper (ca. 35 minutes). If necessary, the workshop will also have an online component.

We are confident we will be able to (partly) fund travel and accommodation costs.

With best wishes,

Jacqueline Klooster (Freiburg) and Annette Harder (Groningen)

Overview of the Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry

1. Callimachus (1992)

2. Theocritus (1994)

3. Genre in Hellenistic Poetry (1996)

4. Apollonius Rhodius (1998)

5. Hellenistic Epigrams (2000)

6. Callimachus II (2002)

7. Beyond the Canon (2004)

8. Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry (2006)

9. Gods and Religion in Hellenistic Poetry (2008)

10. Hellenistic Poetry in Context (2010)

11. Past and Present in Hellenistic Poetry (2013)

12. Drama and Performance in Hellenistic Poetry (2015)

13. Callimachus Revisited. New perspectives in Callimachean scholarship (2017)

14. Women and Power in Hellenistic Poetry (2019)

15. Crisis and Resilience in Hellenistic Poetry (2021)

16. Beyond Alexandria (2023)