Professor Lorna Hardwick

Lorna Hardwick is Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Classical Receptions in Late Twentieth Century Drama and Poetry in English project. Classical Reception Studies is one of the fastest growing areas in Classics research and teaching. It looks at the ways in which Greek and Roman texts, ideas and material culture have been interpreted, used and reworked by subsequent writers, thinkers, artists and societies. In the ancient world oral, written, built or performed texts were a vibrant part of community culture and its often contested values and power struggles. The work of the research project focuses on how these processes have also played an important part in recent culture and politics and have often been catalysts for cultural change. Classical drama and poetry, images and ideas have provided a field for debates about cultural identity and aesthetic values in the present and these activities have redirected attention back to the ancient texts and their contexts, often suggesting new perspectives and interpretations and revealing aspects that have been marginalised or suppressed. The research project’s website publishes a database of modern productions of Greek drama together with critical essays on key aspects of the research. A similar database covering classical referents in modern poetry in English is in preparation. The website also includes a showcase for new researchers, the refereed e-journal New Voices and an archive for the annual international electronic seminar series on the reception of Greek and Roman drama.

Lorna’s publications in the field of classical reception include Translating Words, Translating Cultures (2000) and New Surveys in the Classics; Reception Studies (2003) as well as a number of articles on drama and poetry. She has a particular interest in the impact of various kinds of translation and adaptation on modern perceptions of Greece and Rome and in the reworking of classical material in post-colonial contexts (publications.) She is, with Professor Jim Porter (University of Michigan) the Series Editor for the new series Oxford Studies in Classical Receptions: Classical Presences and is co-editor, with Dr Chris Stray (Swansea) of the Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions (2008) and, with Carol Gillespie, of Classics in Post-colonial Worlds. She is editor of the Oxford Classical Receptions Journal (CRJ) which is to be launched at the end of 2009.

She has contributed to many Open University courses in Classical Studies, including Rome: The Augustan Age, Fifth-century Athens: City State and Democracy, Homer: Poetry and Society, Culture Identity and Power in the Roman Empire, Exploring the Classical World and the MA in Classical Studies Greek theatre module. She has also contributed teaching material on classical themes to a number of Arts Faculty interdisciplinary courses including the first level course, The Arts Past and Present, in which she discusses the relationship between Sophocles’ play Antigone and Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes. Lorna has also contributed to the MA in English (starting October 2009).

From 2000–2005 Lorna was Subject Director for Classics and Ancient History in the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology. She works extensively with post-graduate students in the OU and internationally and is the Convenor of the Classical Reception Studies Network which is hosted by the Open University). In 2005–7 she served as the President of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers.

Follow this link for more information about Lorna’s publications