Αbstracts are invited to the workshop “Shaping Men, Shaping Worlds: Masculinities in Ancient Western Asia”, which will take place on 27th–28th August 2026 at the University of Helsinki. The workshop will be held in a hybrid format, allowing for both in-person and online participation for those unable to travel.
The research of masculinities in ancient Western Asia has grown rapidly in recent years. Although the field occasionally considered non-women genders in earlier scholarship, it was not until the Mapping Ancient Near Eastern Masculinities conference in 2011 and the subsequent volume Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity (ed. Ilona Zsolnay, 2017) that masculinities emerged as a sustained focus within ancient Western Asian studies. Since then, interest in the topic has continued to expand, reflected in a steady flourishing of workshops, monographs, and articles.
Fifteen years on, it is time to assess and further stimulate this area of research with a dedicated workshop. While the Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East (GeMANE) workshops have provided an essential platform for gender studies in the field, their primary focus has remained on women. Yet even in GeMANE, the growth of interest in masculinities studies has been noted, as an entire panel was dedicated to the topic in GeMANE 6.
The upcoming workshop, “Shaping Men, Shaping Worlds: Masculinities in Ancient Western Asia”, invites papers that explore recent developments in the study of masculinities in ancient Western Asia. We understand this to include papers covering a large geographical and chronological time span, including Egyptology and biblical studies.
We will also be particularly interested in papers that examine how, in ancient Western Asia, the natural world is used to construct masculinities through metaphor, but also to understand the gender of non-human entities. Methodological reflections on this topic are particularly encouraged.
The workshop is organised within the framework of the Centre of Excellence Ancient Near Eastern Empires (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/ancient-near-eastern-empires), University of Helsinki, and Plants in the Ancient Near East (PlANET) (https://www.uniroma1.it/en/pagina/pianet), a collaboration between Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Pennsylvania.
Please submit your abstract using the registration form: https://forms.office.com/e/6e7vts3WBP by the 15th December 2025. The word limit is 500 words. Abstracts should clearly state the research question, methodology, and types of data used. There is no need for references, though they are welcome.
For further information, please contact the organizers:
Eleanor Bennett – [email protected]
Gioele Zisa – [email protected] / [email protected]
