PACE

PACE = The Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement at York University, (cf. former posting) is really an interesting project:
"The Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement (PACE) at York University aims to recover the Ancient Mediterranean World for our time in new ways. Its focus is the set of problems arising from the encounter and interaction of cultures: representation of one's own group and others', motivations for learning about or depicting the other, stereotypes (e.g., the barbarian) and rhetorical commonplaces, attraction to the exotic or revulsion at the alien, conscious assimilation or repudiation, and all the attendant problems of identity-construction. Needless to say, these are issues of great contemporary significance, but they were also addressed with remarkable fullness and deliberation in the cultural encounters begun by Alexander the Great's conquests and continuing through the Roman period. Even where we lack deliberate or sophisticated analysis by the ancients, they provide vast amounts of material, which we are sometimes able to check against material remains, for modern reflection."They describe their procedures further thus: As a framework for grounding this broad initiative, we have settled upon the “dynamic” or “living” commentary. Taking advantage of web-based possibilities, we are identifying major authors from Greco-Roman antiquity who stand conspicuously at the confluence of cultures. They might be chiefly observers of the other–“ethnographers” such as Herodotus or Tacitus (Germania)–or, more important for our issues, authors who found themselves actually negotiating these intersections in their work (Polybius of Megalopolis, Diodorus of Sicily, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lucian of Samosata). We begin with Flavius Josephus, whose large and varied literary corpus has singular merits for this problem set.
A fascinating project, combining more ordinary paper print publications with an extensive use of the posibilities of the world wide web. It will be very interesting to see how this develops: So far I did not see anything on Philo in the presentations available so far, but if they are to follow up the program described above, he can hardly be left out.