Narrative Epistemologies of the Ancient Mediterranean World

📅20th-23rd July 2026

Workshop @EABS Annual Conference Leuven 2026

Over the past two decades, research in the humanities and cultural studies has undergone an “epistemic turn”, prompting a re-evaluation of how knowledge objects are developed and constructed, as well as how modes of thought are externalised through text and images. This shift has fuelled sustained debates across various disciplines regarding specific fields of knowledge, mediation of knowledge, and their documentation. This workshop engages with these debates by examining how ancient narratives - from the Persian period through Late Antiquity - mediate epistemologies and negotiate truth/knowledge claims. We focus on these narrative epistemologies, referring to the internal textual strategies, rhetorical patterns, and strategies of fictionality and literary criteria by which a narrative presents certain claims as credible, truthful, or authoritative, while discrediting others as false or deceptive. Secondly, the workshop explores how these epistemologies underpin or legitimise specific practices as true, while others are discredited as false or deceiving. These practices can be explicitly depicted in the narratives themselves but can also be related to social realities of the historical contexts of the text. Thus, theworkshop provides insights into the entangled historical dimensions of the construction of both knowledge and social realities.

The announced workshop seeks to explore the epistemological dimensions of ancient narratives by focusing on the textual, rhetorical, and fictional strategies through which knowledge and truth are conveyed. We refer to these as narrative epistemologies—the ways in which narratives present specific claims as credible, truthful, or authoritative while discrediting others as false or deceptive. Beyond textual strategies, the workshop also considers how such epistemologies relate to or underpin actual social practices, either represented within the narrative itself or inferred from its broader historical and cultural context. The aim is to better understand the mechanisms by which ancient narratives engage in truth discourse, construct legitimacy, and negotiate social and cultural norms through literary form. In doing so, the workshop hopes to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the entangled historical dimensions of knowledge production and validation in Mediterranean antiquity.

The Call for Paper will be open from 8th December, 2025 until 20th January, 2026 on www.eabs.net. To submit a proposal please follow the instructions outlined on the page. 

Planning Team

Benjamin De Vos, Ghent University
Thomas Tops, Unversity of Wuppertal
Thomas Wagner, University of Wuppertal