Mark Payne: Critical Antiquities

Critical Antiquities invites reflections on the study of worlds identified as ancient or ancestral. The series considers how productive engagement with antiquity—and with the very construction of “the ancient”—exceeds disciplinary boundaries and procedures. More broadly, it explores how events, structures, and practices beyond the academy—from artistic practice to political platforms—inform our engagement with capaciously imagined ancient/premodern worlds in the present.

The series consists of short (no more than 30,000 words) commissioned books from leading scholars working on ancient/premodern material from around the world. The books in Critical Antiquities are organized around a single concept. They are brief and feature robust, essayistic writing that travels easily across disciplines and into the classroom.

By marrying theoretical sophistication to the clarity and urgency of the essay, series books are meant to appeal to readers from undergraduates and graduate students to practicing scholars. We want to reach a broad audience interested in questions of tradition, reception, and the inheritance of the premodern past.uu