Author Archives: Emma Bridges

Remaking ancient Greek and Roman myths in the twenty-first century

Arachne weaving her final tapestry, by Carlyn Beccia (www.carlynbeccia.com) Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.

[Update 23rd May: All full-day spaces for this event are now filled. If you wish to be placed on a waiting list for a space please get in touch. There are still spaces available for the public event at 5.45pm.]

Registration is now open for this one-day colloquium, which brings together academics and creative practitioners working on contemporary versions of ancient myths. The event will be held at The Open University in London (1-11 Hawley Crescent, Camden, London NW1 8NP) on 7th July 2016.

Attendance at the event is free but booking is essential. Places are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Attendees may register either for the full event or for the public performance at 5.45pm. To reserve a place please email Emma Bridges (e.e.bridges@open.ac.uk) by Tuesday 28th June, stating whether you wish to register for the whole day or for the public event at 5.45pm only.

The programme for the event is as follows:

10.00 – Coffee/registration

10.25 – Welcome

10.30-12.30 – Session 1 (Chair: Lorna Hardwick)

Atreus, Trujillo and the myth-making of Junot Díaz. Justine McConnell (Oxford)

Border territories: transgressing ancient mythic voices in contemporary poetry. A reading and conversation with Josephine Balmer, Fiona Cox and Elena Theodorakopoulos.

”There is another story”: writing after the Odyssey in Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad. Emily Hauser (Yale)

Avid for Ovid: using music to enhance danced interpretations of Ovid’s mythical world. Malcolm Atkins (Open University)

12.30-1.30 – Lunch

1.30-3.30 – Session 2 (Chair: Jessica Hughes)

Twerking for Dionysus in Jan Fabre’s Mount Olympus. Emma Cole (Bristol)

A thoroughly modern maiden: Artemis myth and ritual in twenty-first century Kent. Frances Eley (Open University)

”Stranger still are waters charged”: metamorphosing Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (Ovid, Met. 4.285-388). Artist presentation by Anna Parker (Umeå Academy of Fine Arts).

Regendering Oedipus: from tragic drama to many-mouthed lyric. Poet Amy McCauley in conversation with Gareth Prior.

3.30-4.00 – Tea

4.00-5.30 – Session 3 (Chair: Henry Stead)

Where on earth did you get a story like that? Readings from a new play, Orpheus and Eurydice, presented by Sharon Jennings (playwright).

Subversive advents: exploring a Bacchic narrative in popular cinema. David Bullen (Royal Holloway)

Apotheon: redesigning myth for a video game. Maciej Paprocki (LMU Munich)

5.45-6.45 – Public event

Giving life to the Amazons via the modern female gaze. Theatre-makers Laura Martin-Simpson and Rachel Bagshaw (Blazon Theatre) in conversation, with readings from ICONS, a new play by Paula B. Stanic.

Exam tips: confessions of a professor

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Helen King offers some advice on how to survive exam season with your sanity intact…

‘So you must be really good at exams, yes?’ That’s what everyone assumes when you get an academic job. Well, yes – and no. I recently tweeted my personal three rules of exam success, which go as follows:

Answer the question.

Answer the ****ing question.

A former student commented, ‘seriously I still find myself quoting this mantra. I remember in the Anc Med exam looking round & seeing people muttering this.’ But I can go further. I’ve picked up some techniques along the way and I’ll share some of those here. They worked for me, and maybe they’ll help you too.

1. Breathe. Don’t panic. I used to do my panicking a few weeks before the exam, so by the time I was sitting in that hideous gym or hall I was past all that. But even so the first five minutes were hideous, as those around me turned over the question paper and immediately started to write. Do you know what? These people are writing complete rubbish. They haven’t read the questions; they’ve just spotted a word and gone into overdrive. Don’t follow their example. Sit back. Read the questions. Circle or underline some words. If the questions aren’t what you hoped for, never mind – there will be something you can answer, and possibly you’ll produce a better argument simply because you are thinking rather than regurgitating. Look at the person next to you – wow, on to their second page now! – and feel sorry for them because they aren’t answering the question. After five minutes of thinking and breathing, start to write your plan.

2. Read the question carefully. Questions aren’t written to catch you out, but to help you think about the course material. No question will ever be ‘Tell me everything you know about…’ but some answers will be to that question, rather than to the one being asked. The more obvious questions aren’t always the ones to answer, because your words of wisdom are going to be compared with some very good answers as well as some rather iffy answers. But nor do you want to be the only one answering the question – an examiner is unlikely to give you a top mark without seeing from looking over the field that you really are the front runner. Ideally, you want to be one of a group of answers in which it’s clear that yours is the best. That may mean picking the question carefully. And, unless you read it, and think about it, and make a list of the main points to cover and the examples you could use in answering it, you’re not going to get that right.

3. Passing exams isn’t entirely about what you know, but how you present it. There’s a lot to be said for that boring old structure of an intro saying what you’re going to say, three or four paragraphs each focused on one example which contributes to answering the question, and then a conclusion which pulls the examples together to make that answer very clear. So that rough plan you wrote in the five minutes while those around you failed to address the question must address the key words in that question. By all means, leave some lines blank, then write the essay and go back to do your intro. But in many situations you can do the intro first, on the lines of ‘in order to answer this question I am going to do the following/examine these cases’.

4. Give the examiner something a little different. At university I made a conscious effort to include in each exam script at least one point from a course other than the one being examined. I reckoned this would liven things up for an examiner faced with their fifteenth – or fiftieth – answer to that question. It also showed I could make connections between subjects, and that has to be good. Avoid too much creativity here – a friend at university made up a whole tribe for an Anthropology exam – but a confident and accurate mention of something that wasn’t part of the syllabus looks good. If you have a really bad exam, don’t write a letter to the examiner apologising for your poor performance (yes, I’ve seen those). And don’t take a banknote out of your pocket and reproduce it on the answer book (yes, I’ve seen that, but only the once). There’s ‘different’, and there’s ‘no’.

5. Leave 10 minutes at the end to read through your answers. In exam conditions it’s very easy to write ‘Romans’ when you mean ‘Greeks’ or to miss out the word ‘not’. Reading through will also give you a chance to make your handwriting a bit clearer if you’ve been in a hurry. If you can’t read your own writing, the examiner hasn’t a chance.

6. Go home. There’s little point hanging around as people share what they wrote for each question. Thinking ‘Oh no, I totally misunderstood that one!’ or ‘Why did I forget that brilliant example?’ will only depress you. Onwards to the next exam, after a well-earned sleep!

Editor’s note: You can find Helen King on Twitter @fluff35

OU Classical Studies Postgraduate Work in Progress Day 2016

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Classical Studies PhD student Sophie Raudnitz reports on this year’s annual postgraduate work-in-progress event, which took place in Milton Keynes on 5th May 2016.

Some of the student speakers at the event

I am writing this as I bask in the aftermath of a fantastic Open University Postgraduate Work in Progress Day at Walton Hall last week. I took part in my first one of these last year, six months into my PhD. It was the first time that I had presented a conference paper and I was very grateful for the opportunity to do so in such a supportive and friendly environment. I also relished the fact that the day made me feel part of a wider community of OU classicists. The day was a real eye-opener in terms of the variety of work going on under the umbrella of Classical Studies at the university.

Because of this positive experience last year, when Emma Bridges said that the department was looking for a PhD student to help with the organisation this year and asked me if I might be interested, I was happy to get involved. You’ll be relieved to hear that I won’t say much about this process but a couple of things stood out. I was amazed by the number of responses to my initial ‘save the date’ email from MA students all over the world. Most of them, understandably, could not come to Milton Keynes for a one day conference but the level of interest and the strength of positive feeling towards the OU were particularly heart-warming. As it was, we had an MA speaker, Silvana Delatte, who came over from Switzerland and a PhD student, Dominic Solly, who joined us on Skype from New York. Many of those from the UK also travelled great distances to be there. My other ‘moment’ came as I was compiling speakers’ biographies for the panel I was chairing: I am in awe of the way in which the OU brings together people from such disparate backgrounds, leading such different lives.

PhD student Mair Lloyd presenting her work on Latin language pedagogy

Luckily, a good number of people offered papers without my having to coax at all. We decided to take a relatively formal approach to this year’s conference in asking speakers to submit abstracts, really for the practice that this affords rather than because of any competitive or exclusive element. Emma and I both felt strongly that everyone who wanted to speak should have the opportunity to do so but that the rigour of writing and submitting abstracts and of sticking to word and time limits was worth encouraging too. Again, this process was made very easy by the cooperation of all involved. The final programme consisted of one MA student and eight PhD students, at various points into their studies – from 4 months in to near completion. Taking various factors into account, like travel plans and East Coast Time, I tried to organise the programme in such a way that there was some kind of thematic connection within each of the three panels and I think the day showed the success of this. I certainly found that ideas from previous papers fed very naturally into the way I thought about subsequent ones.

PhD student Catherine Hoggarth speaking about ‘A multisensory exploration of movement across Rome’s urban bridges’

Like last year’s Work in Progress Day, this year’s was almost unadulteratedly great, aside from the inevitable IT stress at the start. Everyone listened, commented and questioned generously and positively and I think that we all appreciated the opportunity to take part. We heard papers on a wide variety of subjects and it was great to see the range of approaches used and to hear the genuine enthusiasm with which people discussed their work. Suffice it to say that Stuart McKie kicked off thinking about gestures of binding and unbinding and shared with us his experiments in sitting at his desk and holding his thumbs, while the day ended with Claire Greenhalgh inviting us to think about ideas of slavery and liberty in Starz’s Spartacus, with adventures in chicken catching and, frankly, many more votive penises than I was expecting, on the way. As a result of Stuart’s paper on body language and magic, I for one, found myself acutely conscious of the way I was crossing my legs or clasping my hands for the rest of the day. After listening to Catherine Hoggarth speaking about on the sensory experience associated with crossing Roman bridges, I became very contemplative about the bridge over the river into my town as I drove home that evening.

Several of us live tweeted furiously, fingers flying, under the hashtag #OUCSWiP – for a flavour of the topics discussed you can read a Storify of the event here. This was my first foray into live tweeting; I have previously held back as I’m not good at multi-tasking at the best of times. Actually it really added to the experience, allowing me to focus better, and seeing the bank of tweets mounting up from other tweeters was genuinely exciting!

I hope that everyone found the day as rewarding and enjoyable as I did and would really like to thank all those who came along. As you can tell, I’m still on a bit of a high. I’d also like to thank the department for laying on this day for us (and to so many staff members for giving up their time to come along). I hope that the PG WiP Day remains an institution and I’m already very much looking forward to next year’s!

Editor’s note: You can also find Sophie on Twitter @seraudnitz

A report from the Classical Association annual conference (#CA16)

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This year’s Classical Association (CA) conference, the largest annual gathering of classicists in the UK, was hosted earlier this month by the University of Edinburgh and was well-attended by members of the OU’s Classical Studies department. Several of us convened panels or gave papers, and still more of us went along to meet up with colleagues from other universities and to find out more about ongoing research in our field. Next year will see the CA conference co-hosted by the Open University in conjunction with the University of Kent, so this was also a great opportunity for us to take notes on some of the organisational aspects of running such a large-scale event!

Eleanor Betts presenting at the ‘Sensational Sanctuaries’ panel. Image credit Lewis Webb. Illustrations (projected) thanks to Jasmine Parker.

Eleanor Betts convened two separate panels, this first of which was ‘Sensational Sanctuaries’, at which both Eleanor and Emma-Jayne Graham presented aspects of their research on sensory experiences of ancient religious sites. The second panel, ‘Power Ranging: Processional Routes from Republican Rome to Napoleonic Paris’ included two of Eleanor’s current PhD students, CHASE student Catherine Hoggarth (University of Kent) and Lewis Webb (Umeå University, Sweden). Read more at Sensory Studies in Antiquity.

Meanwhile Associate Lecturer Tony Keen, as part of a panel on classical myth and science fiction, presented his research on Greek mythology in Iain Banks’ The Bridge. Elsewhere PhD student Mair Lloyd organised a panel on ‘Living Latin’ which brought together experts on the use of immersive spoken language classes as a means of learning the ancient language. You can read a summary of the panel and listen to recordings of the individual presentations on Mair’s blog, and see the Storify of the panel, which was incredibly well-received, here. Mair, along with James Robson, also presented a session on language pedagogy – ‘From zero to hero: managing the transition to university-level study at the OU’ – which showcased the OU’s new Latin module.

We asked some of our postgraduate students to share their thoughts on attending the conference. Here’s what they had to say:

Stuart McKie (PhD student) told us:

My favourite thing about the CA was the huge variety of panels on offer. Over the three days I was there I heard papers on Roman temples, rebel speeches in Tacitus, female suicide in Greek tragedy and Greek myths in modern sci-fi. For my own research interests, the experience of religious and magical practices, the panel on ‘sensational sanctuaries’ was the most applicable. The four papers presented, including those from the OU’s own E-J Graham and Eleanor Betts, gave me great insights into the work being done to understand how people in the ancient world experienced their religious spaces. For me the stand-out paper from the whole conference was from Terence Tunberg, who gave a demonstration of how he teaches Latin as a living language. The paper was delivered completely in Latin in an incredibly energetic style, and included audience participation to get us all involved. I came away with a completely different appreciation not only of teaching methods, but also of how Latin works as a lived, spoken language.

The social side of the conference was also great for me. I got to meet lots of new people, as well as reconnecting with people I only really see at these huge conferences. As this is the 21st century, a fair chunk of this networking was done online, with a very active group of people on Twitter using the hashtag #CA16. All in all it was a great few days, and I already can’t wait for next year!

Cheryl Barker (MA student) writes:

The 2016 conference was the biggest to date, and thus offered a wide variety of panels over 4 days. There were opportunities to discover new approaches to classics, hear a panel in spoken Latin or review papers on more familiar areas related to one’s own past or current studies. I was very happy to listen to PhD students presenting their ongoing research on the reception of Sappho and erotica or theological reflections on Cicero. Eminent professors from across the world debated Tacitus and the peripheries of Empire, ekphrastic mimesis and Persian women in the Greek arts.

The conference was an interesting, informative and convivial experience, and an opportunity for sharing ideas and socialising with likeminded people. It was great to meet up with old friends I first met through OU online fora or at past conferences as well as making new acquaintances over the delicious cakes and scones. There was opportunity to explore the cultural aspects of Edinburgh whether on a walking tour of the city or by a visit to Rosslyn Chapel. However for me, the highlight of the conference was Friday evening’s dinner with a traditional ambience – a ceilidh and Scottish dancing until the wee small hours.

My favourite panels, unsurprisingly, were those which reflected my interest in Greek tragedy and reception and the connection between science fiction and the classics. The panel entitled ‘Archaeology of Stardom’ made me wish my research was on the reception of classics in contemporary media. Antony Augoustakis compared the 1960 film ‘Spartacus’ with the 2010s swords-and-sandals television series whilst Monica Cyrino’s cleverly titled ‘Maximal Projections’ explained how audiences can read classical personas through actors’ previous works – or how Russell Crowe brought Maximus to Noah! Included in another great panel on gender and sexuality was ‘Nymphos and Nags’ about representations of women in British sitcoms based in the Roman world focusing upon ‘Up Pompeii’, ‘Chelmsford 123’ and ‘Plebs’. Stereotyped women’s roles are as present in modern comedies as in Aristophanes’ from Classical Athens. Later, I headed to the Body Adaptors panel and heard, in my opinion, the most intriguing paper of this year’s conference. Were glass and terracotta grave finds ancient baby bottles and breast pumps – or not? It took experimental archaeology to a whole new level!

Of her experience at the conference Claire Greenhalgh (PhD student) said:

This was my second CA and it was every bit as useful as my first (in Bristol) last year. These events are simply incomparable for making contacts, meeting up with fellow classicists, making friends, discussing your research, meeting all the luminaries in your field (in my case Monica Cyrino, the undisputed guru of television classical receptions) and getting a real feel for all the amazing research being done ‘out there’, particularly for distance-learning, part-time researchers like myself. Living in North Wales is also a bit of a barrier when it comes to attending conferences relevant to my field and without the luxury of being able to get to London, Oxford or any of the major university cities easily, attendance at the CA will surely become a fixture of my academic year.

Pacing yourself at such an event is very important as there is always so much going on! This year the Q&A with Ian Rankin and Lindsey Davis was a highlight for me, but the opportunities for networking and learning about new research fields from attending the sessions were invaluable. I am a classical receptions specialist and I’m always impressed by the expertise out there, especially from early research PhD students who give fascinating, erudite and extremely informative presentations. It makes me aware of how much I need to do, but it’s equally inspiring as well.

For me the classical receptions panel ‘The Archaeology of Stardom’ was the most fascinating and also the funniest! One paper in particular made me nostalgic for many a Sunday afternoon spent watching biblical epics like Ben Hur, El Cid (not technically ancient world, but certainly epic) and The Ten Commandments, as well as some of the dodgier B-movie stuff like the deliciously bad but gorgeously shot Samson and Delilah. The talk by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones examined the role of off-screen star personas on the way Hollywood classical epics in the cinema were ‘read’ by audiences. He suggested that many star actors simply played themselves and viewers often confused historical figures with the actors who play them: after all, for many, Charlton Heston IS Moses. Llewellyn-Jones’ main case study was the notorious Taylor/Burton romance which dominated the filming of the disastrous Cleopatra (1963) and profoundly shaped the outcome and reception of the text; Taylor’s star image dominated the picture and the scandal of their liaison meant that the film was all about Antony and Cleopatra (Caesar’s contribution is largely forgotten today) – the film narrative had been envisaged differently but was changed to accommodate the star system. We were treated to some fabulous screen shots, stills, images of those gorgeous movie stars and some wonderful vignettes about the filming. It made me want to watch the film all over again…well, almost!

We hope that you’ll be able to join us next year for the jointly-hosted Open University/Kent conference in Canterbury. For more information, including a call for papers, see the ‘CA2017’ tab at the top of this page.

Teaching ancient myth through cinema, by Tony Keen

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Tony Keen is a long-time Associate Lecturer for the OU, and an Honorary Associate. This post is based on a talk he gave at the Classical Studies Associate Lecturer Training and Development Day in November 2015.

In the sixteen years I’ve taught for the Open University, I’ve often used movies and television as part of my teaching strategies, and this is just as true for the current module I teach, A330 Myth in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Some of these approaches are obvious – if one wants to talk, for instance, about the Gorgon Medusa, it makes sense to show how the cinema has represented her, in movies such as the 1981 and 2010 versions of Clash of the Titans. Such clips can show students that they actually know something about changing depictions of mythological characters. But it’s also possible to be a bit more imaginative.

In the collection of Fables attributed to the Greek slave Aesop, there is found an early version of the tale of the town mouse and the country mouse, probably most famous to classicists in the version found in Horace’s Satires 2.6, lines 79-117. The story is simple. A country mouse is invited to dine with his cousin in the town. The town mouse lays out a splendid table, full of gourmet delights that the country mouse simply can never experience at home. But then the party is disrupted by dogs, and the country mouse decides that, for all its simplicity, his home offers security not to be found in the town.

In 1945, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced the nineteenth cartoon in their cat-and-mouse series Tom and Jerry, ‘Mouse in Manhattan’, directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. It’s an unusual entry in the run. Instead of the usual mayhem caused by Tom’s unsuccessful attempts to catch Jerry, the premise is that Jerry, bored with life in the country, sets off for the bright lights of Manhattan, leaving a note for Tom (who is otherwise barely present). The rest is taken up with Jerry’s adventures in New York, and the dangers he faces. There is no town mouse to equate with Jerry’s country mouse, and the existential threat that drives Jerry back to the country is feral cats, rather than dogs. But the fundamentals of the fable are here, and whilst I am not suggesting that Hanna or Barbera had necessarily read Horace or Aesop (they may have, or they may not), they almost certainly had encountered the story in some form. It has, after all, been much repeated through history; Beatrix Potter retold it in The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse, and in 1936 Walt Disney had overseen a Silly Symphonies short called ‘The Country Cousin’, which adapted the fable more faithfully than ‘Mouse in Manhattan’. One effect of showing this to students is to put them in a good frame of mind – who doesn’t enjoy a good Tom and Jerry cartoon? But it also demonstrates how stories are transformed as they are repurposed, and also makes the original fable seem less remote to students.

Fable is not often dealt with in myth courses. What can using cinema bring to wider understanding of what is more traditionally understood as ‘mythology’? One issue that can confuse students is that various different versions of myths proliferate through antiquity and beyond. Does Hippolytus die at Troezen, or is he reborn as Virbius in Italy? Who kills Medea’s children, the Corinthians or their mother? I explain this through the modern phenomenon of rebooting screen franchises. There are several screen versions of the superhero Superman, with different versions of when and how Kal-El arrived on Earth from Krypton, and his early life. Similarly, the James Bond movies were rebooted in 2006 with Casino Royale, showing Bond’s first mission as a 00 agent. All previous movies were disregarded, and elements from those, such as the terrorist organization SPECTRE, could later be reintroduced. Cinema audiences cope with this perfectly well, so what is the problem with Euripides’ three incompatible versions of Helen of Troy?

My most unusual use of cinema to teach myth is when I show students two versions of the 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in 1946’s My Darling Clementine, and 1957’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. I ask the students to note significant differences between the two (for instance, Doc Holliday dies in the gunfight in the former, and survives it in the latter). I then show how the two versions relate to what actually happened, and explain that while the later movie is a little more true to the events of 1881, nevertheless both fictionalize extensively. My point is to show how fictionalized and mythologized versions of historical events can depart from what actually happened, in different ways in different versions. So it’s almost impossible to use a fictionalized account to reconstruct a putative historical event when historical records don’t exist, and students should be suspicious when that is attempted, as it often is with Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War.

Hopefully this will spark further ideas of how to use cinema in teaching. Let us know in the comments what you do.

by Tony Keen

Editor’s note: Tony has also produced various Open University learning resources which you can access for free via OpenLearn here.

Travels with a toga: Roman dress in the classroom

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OU Classical Studies Lecturer Ursula Rothe has been visiting school pupils to talk about her research on Roman dress.

On 2nd March I went to Redborne Upper School in Ampthill, Bedfordshire to give a talk to senior school pupils on the topic of Roman dress. It was the first time I had done something like this with props – I had spent a weekend sewing together Roman garments like male and female tunicae, an exomis, a palla and a toga complete with detachable purple stripe! In all, 65 students turned up to learn about how dress not only reflected but was actively used to enact specific roles in Roman society, such as

Gender: how men and women were meant to look and behave in public
Class: what social rank your occupation belonged to (clue: the less clothing you wore, the lower down the social scale you were!)
Age: the way elite Roman children wore the toga praetexta (toga with purple stripe) as symbolic protection from harm and inappropriate language and actions, and how clothing symbolised their coming-of-age: boys adopting a toga virilis (plain white toga) at a special ceremony and girls adopting matron’s dress on the day after their wedding
Religious observance: how both men and women covered their heads when performing religious ceremonies

The enthusiasm of the students was overwhelming and I was only sorry that not everyone got to dress up!

by Ursula Rothe

Call for papers: Married to the military – soldiers’ families in the ancient world and beyond

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Offers of papers are invited for this two-day international conference to be held at The Open University in London (1-11 Hawley Crescent, Camden, London NW1 8NP) on 11th and 12th November 2016.

In societies where the threat of armed conflict was an ever-present element of the political and social experience, the impact of war was acutely felt by the immediate families of those whose role it was to train for and engage in combat. This conference aims to explore the roles and experiences of military families (defined here as the nuclear family of soldier, partner and children) in the ancient world and to situate these within the wider context of the history of such families. We therefore welcome offers of papers on any aspect of military families in the ancient world as well as comparative studies which consider more recent historical contexts.

The conference aims to commemorate Remembrance Day with a detailed discussion of a subject that is rarely broached in historical and cultural studies. It is true that there has been some headway made in understanding the role of women and children in Roman military forts, especially on the north-west frontier, but there has been very little joined-up thinking on the military family as a general phenomenon in antiquity and how it sits within the history of military families as a whole. The Greek model of standing armies who spent long periods of time away from home in combat – leaving behind wives and children – contrasts, for example, with the Roman practice of establishing permanent garrisons with ‘camp followers’ attached to military bases. The experiences of partners whose husbands were fighting a defensive war at home might differ considerably from those left behind or even joining their partners as they fought in territory far from home.

Possible themes for discussion might include:

social status and identity of soldiers’ partners and children
legal status and security for soldiers’ partners and children
raising children in a military household or with an ‘absent father’
experiences of separation, reunion and readjustment
relationships between military families and the army
dealing with bereavement and physical or psychological trauma
military education of children/the role of military children in recruitment

Confirmed speakers include:

Prof. Edith Hall (King’s College London)

Prof. Penelope Allison (University of Leicester)

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Ursula Rothe (Ursula.Rothe@open.ac.uk) or Emma Bridges (E.E.Bridges@open.ac.uk) by Monday 23rd May.

Of scholarship and superheroes

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OU Classical Studies MA student Suzanne Slapper shares her experiences of bringing the joys of the ancient world to schoolchildren.

As is so often the case, my obsession with Classics started when I was a child. I remember a man coming to our junior school to talk about Greek myths; I was captivated. So, when ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ later came on TV, I watched it in awe and spent a whole summer fighting imaginary skeletons grown from teeth.

Graduating with my BA

Unfortunately, I could not pursue this interest at school, but the seed had been sown and so, as soon as I was able, I opted to take a little course in Latin. Well, we all know that Latin is a gateway drug and it wasn’t long before I was onto the hard stuff – yes, ‘Continuing Classical Greek’. The years sped by and before I knew it I had my BA. I am now in the second year of the fantastic MA in Classical Studies, all thanks to the Open University and its mission to educate anybody and everybody who comes knocking. I really love the interdisciplinary approach of the MA course, and have found all the varied aspects of it stimulating. The structure of the material interweaves the development of the students’ research skills with the imparting of scholastic knowledge in a way that is seamless. So I am now looking forward to writing my dissertation in the summer, rather than dreading it, as I have been able to practise all of the necessary steps in a carefully gradated way.

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself! Let’s rewind a bit. I was a couple of years into the BA when I was thinking about how fantastic it is that the OU brings Classics to all and wishing that I’d had the same opportunity at school. I guess that’s what led me to contact The Iris Project. This educational charity was founded by Lorna Robinson with the idea of bringing Classics to children who would not normally have access to it. I was welcomed on board and soon found myself editing the online version of the Iris Magazine. This was great fun and afforded me opportunities to see behind the scenes at the Fitzwilliam and Ashmolean museums and even handle some of their artefacts.

Selling ‘Roman herbs’ at the East Oxford Classics Centre

As my MA has progressed, I have less time to spend on the magazine, but I am still involved with the project’s Classics days at the East Oxford Classics Centre. Yes, people flock from miles around to see my Roman herb stall – oh, and to listen to the speakers, I guess! On one occasion, a certain Helen King came to speak. If I remember correctly, it was an ‘eye-opening’ account of being a Roman soldier with conjunctivitis – if that’s not an oxymoron.

So this year I decided to set myself a further goal and take some direct action in the area where I live. I plucked up the courage to email the local junior school to ask whether they would be interested in my giving some enrichment classes for their pupils. An email popped back with a ‘yes please’ within five minutes! I ran a class on ‘superheroes’ ancient and modern just before Christmas and it really was the best experience. Just like me, the children all seemed to have a natural interest in the subject and soon we were discussing the underlying structures of superhero plots. I was very impressed by the level of understanding; in fact, at one point it got pretty philosophical about the difference between a superhero and a god. In the end the children decided that Dr Who was indeed godlike, but that Harry Potter was ‘just’ a superhero. I then read a version of the myth of Perseus as a way of thinking about the same issues, and the children went on to write some wonderfully imaginative stories of their own using a similar structure. I had super… -men, -women, -boys, -girls, -plants, -dogs, -cats, -robots, and even -hair. I’m not sure what the class teacher thought about it all, but they have asked me back to run some classes about the Olympics in the summer, and the class seemed delighted!

Even if I have managed to plant a seed of interest in just one of them, that would be a matter of huge excitement for me. Who knows where it might lead to – maybe one of them might be a future OU MA student?

So now for my next challenge…big school!

by Suzanne Slapper

Call for papers: Remaking ancient Greek and Roman myths in the twenty-first century

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Offers of papers are invited for a one-day colloquium on the theme of Remaking ancient Greek and Roman myths in the twenty-first century. This event will be held at The Open University in London (1-11 Hawley Crescent, Camden, London NW1 8NP) on 7^th July 2016.

The recent upsurge in revivals of classical myth on the stage – with UK theatres currently programming adaptations of both Greek tragedy and the Homeric epics on an unprecedented scale – is mirrored in other artistic media ranging from the visual arts to contemporary poetry and fiction as well as television and film. This one-day colloquium aims to foster conversation between academics and practitioners working on contemporary versions of the ancient myths in order to examine some of the issues encountered by both scholars of classical reception and those whose creative works they study. How might we account for the ongoing appeal of ancient myths for artists/writers and their audiences? In what ways are retellings of ancient myths shaped by the new contexts or media within which they are produced? Whilst myth is by its nature pliable, are there any limits to the flexibility which creative practitioners have in adapting the ancient tales for a twenty-first century audience? We also hope to consider the ways in which audience engagement with retellings of mythical narratives can foster wider interest in the classical world.

Proposals for twenty-minute papers are invited; we would also welcome proposals for presentations in formats other than lecture-style delivery (e.g. performance pieces from practitioners or ‘in conversation’ sessions).

Confirmed speakers: Emma Cole (Bristol); Lorna Hardwick (Open University); Laura Martin-Simpson (Blazon Theatre); Justine McConnell (Oxford); Henry Stead (Open University).

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to Emma Bridges at the Open University (e.e.bridges@open.ac.uk) by Monday 18^th April 2016.

Introducing…Paul Found, Classical Studies teacher and former OU student

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Paul Found is a former Open University student who now teaches at Norton Knatchbull School in Kent. Here he tells us how his Open University MA in Classical Studies has enabled him to introduce the subject to his school’s curriculum.

We experience very few truly life-defining moments, but clicking on the ‘apply now’ button for my first Open University course is undoubtedly the one that put me on the path to the most rewarding career move I have undertaken.

It was 2005, and after working on the Channel Tunnel construction and for several years in the diving industry, I decided I was fed up with getting cold, wet and dirty for a living and it was time for a change. I decided on a career in teaching and I needed a degree, despite the fact I hadn’t written an essay since I left school in 1978. I also had a family and a mortgage, so there was no way I could give up working and this was where the Open University presented itself as the only viable option.

My decision to study for a masters in Classical Studies was itself driven by the presentation of the classical units in the old A103 module ‘An Introduction to the Humanities’ – and while I enjoyed every aspect of study, the units on the Colosseum and classical architecture, gladiators, and Euripides’ Medea had me hooked. Switching to a Classics undergraduate degree would have been simple, but I needed a job, and felt that the combination of English and History would give me more schools to choose from. Along with a mixture of luck and pure stubbornness on my part, however, the OU Classical Studies MA has allowed me to introduce Classical Studies to my school curriculum and to forge for myself the position of leading the subject alongside my role as a Teacher of English.

Studying for an MA in Classical Studies without a prior qualification in the subject was both challenging and rewarding in equal measure. The academic level of the course materials, coupled with the elevated academic requirement for the marked assignments, very quickly made me realise I was going to have to ‘up my game’. My tutor’s level of knowledge and expertise meant there would be no taking short-cuts and for me ‘near enough’ was never going to be ‘good enough’. The feedback for the first submission of my final dissertation began with ‘Oh dear Paul…’, and for the revised submission with ‘We need an urgent meeting!’ I started again, spending my entire summer holidays locked away working on the dissertation. The final result narrowly missed out on a distinction, but the experience of that year equipped me for the rigours of a teaching career more than anything the classroom or teacher training could throw at me.

Some of the GCSE and A level classicists at Norton Knatchbull School

The final year of the MA coincided with my first year at the Norton Knatchbull Grammar School in Ashford, Kent, which followed three years working in a somewhat challenging secondary school. Employed as a Teacher of English, I was delighted to be allocated an A level English Literature class and even more delighted that one of the set texts was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a novel that draws many parallels with Homer’s Odyssey. This, along with the classical references in the Shakespearean texts, presented the only real opportunities to present my classical knowledge in any meaningful way, until the school decided to drop its International Baccalaureate provision and offer a wider range of A levels. Seizing the opportunity, I offered a proposal for Classical Civilisation A level, waved my MA at the right people, and an agreement was reached to include the subject on the curriculum.

Meeting Peter Stothard, Edith Hall and Tom Holland with some of my sixth-formers.

I had arguably the most eclectic bunch of students you could imagine in that first intake, ranging from a student who has subsequently gone on to study English Literature at Cambridge to another whose main interest was in computers and who hardly knew which way up to hold a pen! The one thing they all had in common was that none really knew what Classics was all about when they signed up. Those who stayed on to continue at A2 had really caught ‘the Classics bug’, and their enthusiasm did much to raise the profile of the subject. I’m delighted to report that Classical Civilisation is now the fastest-growing academic subject in the school, with five of this year’s Y13 having applied to study Classics degrees at various universities.

With Mary Beard at the British Museum in 2014

The subject has now expanded to a lunchtime Latin club and a well-attended extra-curricular GCSE Classical Civilisation class. Much of this is driven by the 6^th form students; some even assist with the GCSE teaching and help to deliver a new initiative to take after-school Latin into a local primary school. The now annual Classics drama production has become one of the most anticipated events on the school calendar and we have a schedule of trips, events and lectures which mean we are always looking forward to something outside of the classroom, including an annual trip to Rome.

While studying with the OU taught me a great deal about the importance of time-management, it also ignited an insatiable (if time-consuming!) hunger for knowledge which went far beyond the scope of my OU assignments. It was always satisfying gaining that knowledge through totally independent study and being able to meet the assessment deadlines despite the pressures of work and life in general. How does this help me in my work? I don’t need to ‘teach’ my students what they can read in a book – they can do that themselves. In addition to ‘how to pass the exam’, I teach them what the OU taught me – how to take ownership of the subject, personalise their studies and use them as a foundation to go off and explore independently some of the many wonderful aspects of ancient life and culture.

How far we can expand Classical Studies at my school, I don’t yet know. I am currently the only teacher of the subject there, and there is only so much one person can do, but it is the enthusiasm and dedication of my students which will determine how far we can develop each year. On current form, we are going a long, long way!

Paul Found MA (Class. Stud.), Norton Knatchbull School (http://www.nks.kent.sch.uk/)

Editor’s note: If you’ve been inspired by Paul’s story and would like to find out more about postgraduate qualifications in Classical Studies at the Open University you can do so by visiting our departmental web pages here. The undergraduate humanities foundation module which Paul mentions in his post has been replaced by a newer version, The Arts Past and Present, which still includes lots of classical material: see here for more information and taster materials from that module.