Recent scholarship in Classics has redirected the exclusive focus on ancient Greece and Rome to study of the broader ancient Mediterranean as a space of diversity and connectivity, and at the same time, traced the transmission of classical antiquity in cultures and regions beyond the West.

Such work includes the study of ancient African cultures, representations of Africa by Greco-Roman authors, and African receptions of the Classics. At the same time, classicists working in African countries may or may not choose to thematize an African connection to the Classics. This conference is intended to facilitate a flexible and open-ended dialogue, where Africa is at once the focus of research and the site of current disciplinary praxis—it both invites contributions on Classics and Africa and on lines of research currently pursued in Africa.