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.

A postcard from Rome (the RAC/TRAC conference 2016)

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The Open University was well represented at the combined Roman Archaeology Conference and Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (RAC/TRAC for short), held at La Sapienza University in Rome from March 16^th-20^th. A crowd of us went along to present papers, run sessions and/or listen to the latest research in Roman Archaeology – and of course we also took the opportunity to visit museums and sites across the Eternal City…

Papers

Stuart McKie giving his paper on curse tablets

Jessica Hughes and Stuart McKie both presented in a session on Thursday entitled Appropriating Traditions, Negotiating Forms: Material Culture and Roman Religion Between Categories and Variables. The session was organised by Katharina Rieger from the University of Erfurt, who had asked us to consider “how [we] might make use of standardisation, appropriation and transformation when dealing with the varieties from the world of things.”

Jessica considered these issues in relation to the votive offerings she works on, revisiting the ancient and modern terminology for dedications; she also explored how digital technologies such as data-tagging and cluster analysis might lead us towards new ways of dividing and classifying the millions of votive objects that survive from the ancient world.

Stuart then looked at how the categories developed by scholars in relation to Greco-Roman curse tablets might be applied or re-invented in relation to the North-Western curse tablets that he is studying in his PhD. His paper emphasised the role of social context and on-going personal relationships in the creation of the tablets, and drew parallels with anthropological case studies from traditional cultures in the modern world. (Visit Stuart’s blog to find out more about this topic!)

A distance shot of Eleanor Betts, talking about Ostia and the Senses

Eleanor Betts had organised a whole panel on Sensory Archaeology, and this took place on the Friday morning. Taking as its theme the multiple perspectives of sensory space, this session explored the role played by the senses in recognising, understanding and using Roman urban space, with a specific focus on movement within the cities of Rome, Ostia and Pompeii. Eleanor’s own paper (‘Multisensory Mapping of Ostia’s Regio I.IV’) demonstrated the extent to which reconstructing sensory data might alter our perceptions of ancient cityscapes. (You can read more about Eleanor’s work on the senses on the Sensory Studies in Antiquity blog).

Field trips

When the conference drew to a close on Saturday afternoon, many of the delegates made their way down to the Roman Forum. A number of us spent the afternoon exploring the church of Santa Maria Antiqua, which had re-opened with great ceremony earlier that week when the icon of the Madonna had been brought ‘home’ in a procession from the church of Santa Maria Nova. We were quite amazed by the museological techniques that the curators had used to bring the wall-paintings alive, such as the lasers projecting colours, details and explanatory text on top of the faded frescoes.

Individually, we managed to fit in several other research-related visits to Roman museums. On Wednesday Jess met the painter Umberto Passeretti at Trajan’s Markets to interview him about his exhibition ‘Un presente antichissimo’ for our OU e-journal Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies. It was fantastic to walk around the temporary exhibition – arranged amidst the ancient sculptures – and to listen to the artist talk about his classically-inspired paintings of myths and bodies.

Jess and Emma-Jayne also went the Capitoline Museums to visit the exhibition Capitol. Myth, Memory and Archaeology, although we spent an equal amount of time gazing at the tiny gemstones from the collections of the Fondazione di Dino e Ernesta Santerelli.

Offerings left at the remains of the Temple of Julius Caesar in the Forum Romanum to mark the Ides of March.

Before the conference started on Tuesday, Stuart witnessed a fatal stabbing at Largo Argentina… well, the re-enactment of one anyway! It was the Ides of March, and a local historical re-enactment group put on a dramatization of the assassination of Julius Caesar – it was quite an experience! Also while in the city, Stuart had a look at the new display of the curse tablets from the Fountain of Anna Perenna in the Epigraphic Museum at the Baths of Diocletian. It’s a great display, and shows not only the curses themselves but the magic dolls and other ritual objects deposited in the fountain.

And finally…

Since at least one other OU Classicist is going to Rome this year, we thought it was only fair to share our best food-related discoveries too!

For lunches around the forum/Piazza Navona area we would recommend the Antica Birreria Peroni. It has a nice atmosphere (lovely frescoed walls), and a reasonably-priced menu; dishes include Roman classics like spaghetti cascio e pepe and is open throughout the afternoon (useful if, like us, you lose track of time in the museum!)

If you are after artichokes (carciofi) or just something a bit more traditional, try Trattoria da Giggetto located right next to the ancient Portico d’Ottavia.

La Sapienza University is in the area of San Lorenzo, which is a little way from the city centre. But if you find yourself there, we’d highly recommend a visit to Pinsa e Buoi.

Everyone has their favourite place for ice-cream in Rome so why not try them all?! Emma-Jayne’s favourite is San Crispino, just round the corner from the Trevi Fountain on Via della Panetteria (they also have a shop close to the Pantheon) and highly recommends their ginger and cinnamon or straciatella flavours. There’s also a San Crispino’s at Fiumicino airport!

Emma-Jayne (and Constantine) in the Capitoline Museums

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 ([email protected]) or Emma Bridges ([email protected]) by Monday 23rd May.

Iambus and Elegy: New Approaches (A Q&A with Laura Swift)

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This week we chatted with OU Classicist Laura Swift about her newest publication – a volume co-edited with Chris Carey (UCL) entitled Iambus and Elegy: New Approaches (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Please can you define iambus and elegy for us?

LS: Iambus and elegy are two important types of early Greek poetry, and along with melic poetry, they’re often grouped under the category of ‘early Greek lyric’. They flourished in the seventh and sixth centuries BC (though they were almost certainly performed long before that), and in chronological terms our surviving examples come in the period between Homer and Athenian tragedy that often gets skipped over in undergraduate courses. The famous authors include Archilochus and Solon (who wrote both iambus and elegy), Tyrtaeus, Theognis and Simonides (who wrote elegy), and Semonides and Hipponax (who wrote iambus). Neither form is particularly easy to define, which was one reason that we wanted to compile an edited volume on them. Normally ancient scholars divided up poetic forms according to metre, but iambus and elegy both use metres that cross genres. Elegy is more straightforward in a way, as it can be defined as poetry that uses the elegiac couplet, but it’s very hard to pin down in terms of any core content or style, since we have narrative or mythological elegy, drinking songs, love poetry, and political philosophy. The one thing it doesn’t seem to contain is anything ‘elegiac’ (in the sense of the English word ‘elegy’, meaning a lament), and that’s often muddied the waters in trying to define it. Iambus is rather a hotch-potch of different metres, so people have often tried to define it in terms of content instead, and it’s usually thought of as abuse poetry. It’s true that there’s plenty of abuse, vitriol, and dirty language in iambus, but it’s not only blame-poetry: it can also be humorous, or even moralising and philosophical. So both are very wide-ranging and diverse forms, and are hard to pin down.

How have these subjects traditionally been studied?

A lot of scholarship has focused on definitional questions, and so one aim of the book was to move beyond this and study the poetry itself for what it is. Iambus and elegy have also been considered the poor cousin of melic poetry, and so they’ve had less attention than (say) the poetry of Pindar or Sappho. But they’re also a dynamic area, not least because new poems continue to turn up regularly. Over the course of the twentieth century, the amount of iambus and elegy that is available to scholars increased dramatically, and that has carried on in recent years. For example, a major new elegy by Archilochus was published in 2005, and some more fragmentary lines of his iambics were found in 2012. Because we’re dealing with quite a small corpus, new finds can really change what we think about a poet or a genre, and that makes it an exciting field to study.

How did you get the idea for the book?

The book was based on a conference that my co-editor Chris Carey and I organised in 2012, as part of a Leverhulme Fellowship that I had at that time. I had originally thought of having a conference just on Archilochus, the author I was working on, but then decided to broaden it out to iambus and elegy (the two forms Archilochus composed in), because I thought that would allow more variety and help us make connections between different poets. Lyric poetry is a vibrant sub-field in Classical Studies, with a very lively community, but most of the conferences in lyric are dominated by papers on the melic poets. Chris pointed out that there hadn’t ever been a conference focusing exclusively on iambus and elegy, and it was a great opportunity to put them centre-stage. We were really happy with how the conference went, and OUP was interested in publishing a volume inspired by it, and so we worked alongside some of the scholars who gave papers at the conference to put a collection together.

How long did it take to put the book together?

The conference took place in July 2012, and we started talking to contributors about a volume and putting together a draft proposal for OUP that autumn. The whole process of getting together the contributions, getting feedback to the contributors on their chapters, and then working with them to get revised versions took just over two years, and we submitted the completed manuscript to the Press in December 2014. After that, the copy-editing and typesetting process took about another year, and so the book appeared in print this February.

What was the hardest part of the process, for you as an editor?

There were two aspects that I found challenging. The first was keeping on top of all the contributions at the stage where we were dealing with revisions: for example, keeping track of which stage each paper was at, when we had last been in touch with each contributor, and whether there were outstanding queries we needed to resolve or we were waiting for them to respond to something we had raised. In any edited volume, some contributors are in a position to turn around their piece very quickly and others need more time to fit it in with their other commitments, and so there’s a certain amount of diplomacy needed in encouraging those who still needed to get papers in, while making sure that the people who had already done so didn’t feel we’d forgotten all about them or that the project had lost momentum.

The second thing was that I hadn’t realised how much work would be required from the editors after the final submission of the manuscript, during the copy-editing and typesetting process. Although I’ve been through that process with monographs, it’s much easier when you’re dealing with something that’s just your own work. Dealing with copy-editing queries on someone else’s article and checking consistency across chapters is much more challenging. Fortunately, Chris had done all of that before, and so it was fantastic to have an experienced co-editor.

Can you tell us about your own chapter on Archilochus’ erotic imagery?

My chapter is about how Archilochus uses imagery associated with the natural world in his erotic poems, particularly images of plants and fertility. This is a very common strand of imagery in Greek poetry, where a woman’s body is compared to the landscape (so a young girl is like a beautiful wild meadow, and a married woman is like fertile ploughland). But I argue that Archilochus plays with this imagery and turns it around. For example, rather than praising a young woman by comparing her to a beautiful landscape, he abuses a woman for being ‘past it’ by comparing her to a dried up wintry landscape, or to a fruit that’s starting to get flaccid and over-ripe. So Archilochus is reworking imagery from other poetic genres in a provocative and playful way, which showcases his creativity as a poet.

Iambus and Elegy: New Approaches is published by Oxford University Press.

My MA experience, by Sam Spencer

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In December 2015 our first holder of the Baron Thyssen MA Scholarship in Classical Studies completed her studies, achieving a Merit in our MA in Classical Studies. To celebrate this achievement we asked Sam to share her experiences of being an MA student at the OU. Here’s what she wrote …

I started with the OU in 2006, a level 1 Spanish module for pleasure, which quickly developed into a BA (Hons) Humanities with Classical Studies. I had always regretted not taking Latin and Roman history further than ‘O’ level at school, so this was the fulfilment of a personal ambition. Three months after finishing my degree, I realised that I missed the studying (the OU is addictive!), and looked into an MA in Classics. There was a taught MA at the University in my home city, but I felt that the OU continued to meet my personal needs better: I am a single mum, who works school hours, and I needed the flexibility that studying with the OU gave me. The fact that it was mainly assignment-based was an important part of my choice, as I don’t do as well in exams. And I knew that I would have the same tutor from my Classics degree modules for the first two years of the MA (who then became my dissertation supervisor), and that continuity was a bonus.

The first year was busy, four different blocks, giving a good grounding for what was to come, and although the TMAs were challenging, I could see my progress through the year as I became more analytical, critical, and more concise in my writing, and was beginning to get an idea for what I really enjoyed and would like to do for my dissertation. I even passed the exam at the end of the year, which gave me confidence for the second year, which I was not looking forward to: Greek Theatre. I didn’t think I would enjoy this, but threw myself into it in my normal way, and discovered that it really wasn’t too bad. I think that having done the Myth module as part of my degree helped with the background, and a few of us from across the country met in Cambridge just before the module started to watch the Greek plays that year, which brought them alive, and showed us that Aristophanes was still relevant (and very funny) today.

And finally, my favourite part: the dissertation. I am quite motivated and focussed in my studies, and really enjoyed all of the reading and researching. I knew that historiography was the area that interested me the most, and wanted to investigate Marcus Agrippa and his contribution to Augustus’ rise to power. Having discussed this with my tutor, this was expanded to ‘How important were Augustus’ networks and alliances in gaining and maintaining power?’. It was a really vibrant time in Rome’s history: there is still a lot of extant literature and even more modern scholarship. My research led me through some well-known names: Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius, Cicero, but also the development of the army, and of patronage, the changing political situation, and relationships with client kings. But most of all, to find evidence of the many skilled men who worked in the background and supported Augustus.

How did I develop? Key to it all were my time management skills, and being flexible in my studies (as my children moved from primary to secondary school, it became increasingly difficult to put them to bed at 8 pm so that I could study, so l adapted to shorter sessions at night and early morning, and whenever the opportunity arose!). I developed the ability to speed read and quickly pick out what I needed from a text. Now I am definitely more critical when reading modern scholarship and finally better at argument and balance, thanks to my supervisor who constantly challenged me. I also benefitted from SCONUL access to Manchester University Library, and the OU’s own online resources and the JSTOR database. I have a small library of my own now too.

I hope that I have shown my children that it is never too late to achieve something you really want, and that you can do well if you work hard at it. Achieving the MA was good, but more than that, I met some wonderful people along the way who kept me going (we were lucky enough to have face-to-face tutorials then, but still used forums to keep in touch). I now enjoy Greek theatre, which seems to be enjoying a revival, and I discovered a love of Homer. I’m not sure of my next steps – after a few months off, I am definitely missing the studying, and want to brush up my Latin, while I keep my eyes open for opportunities where I can use my administrative skills combined with something in the Classical world. I would really recommend the OU MA: as University teaching becomes more digital and online, they have a wealth of experience in providing distance-learning modules, and excellent tutors to support you.

by Sam Spencer

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

‘How to submit a PhD thesis’, by Rebecca Fallas

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Rebecca Fallas is a full-time PhD student who has just submitted her thesis on ‘Individual Responsibility and The Culture of Blame Surrounding Infertility in Ancient Medical Texts’. We asked her if she had any advice for other PhD students approaching submission – here’s what she wrote!

‘You know the transitional phase of childbirth, where a woman says she can’t go on and the midwife will say that means you’re nearly there? Well I’m hoping that is the same with this thesis.’

About a month before submitting my thesis I found myself uttering this sentence (working on ancient infertility inevitably means that any analogies I make are related to childbirth in some way). This was at the stage where the tiredness had really set in but it was also the point where the end was in sight and I finally began to believe that my thesis could be completed before the deadline for submission.

As anyone will tell you, the final few months before submitting a PhD thesis are a whirlwind. There are drafts and redrafts being pinged back and forth between you and your supervisors. That section of a chapter that you’ve been (often with good reason) putting off for the last three years can wait no longer. There are corrections to be made, references to chase, a bibliography to check and arguments to refine and all you really want to do at this point is lie down in a dark room and pretend the world doesn’t exist (this may have been just me but I suspect it’s fairly common).

Although slightly manic, as the thesis came together I actually found I enjoyed the final stages of thesis writing. Admittedly this may have been an academic version of Stockholm syndrome (where kidnap victims start to identify with their captors) but I learned a lot in those last few months before submission. Having had some time to reflect I thought I would share some of the tactics I employed to get my thesis written, things which helped me to keep my sanity – and one thing which meant that I nearly missed my deadline.

1) Get organised.

In the final few months before submission your world shrinks somewhat and your thesis is likely to become, if not the only thing in your life, one of the few things that can grab your attention. Although this is true to some extent throughout your PhD it does step up a gear at this point. Knowing that this would be the case a couple of months before submitting I decided to get organised.

In terms of thesis this meant going through all the criteria for submission from how to set out the title page to downloading the form that I needed to complete when I submitted. I also made sure I had all the paper and ink cartridges I would need for printing. I also sorted out all the non-thesis things that needed to be done before submission. I wrote birthday cards, booked appointments and did anything I could that would mean I needed to keep as little as possible in my head and fewer things to distract me.

2) ‘Thesis brain’

Unfortunately being so focused on one thing means that inevitably other things fall out of your brain. This might be a case of not being able to remember simple facts or completely forgetting people’s names. In my case it was forgetting that the university library doesn’t open on a bank holiday (let’s be honest, forgetting that it actually was a bank holiday). If your brain deems it non-essential it may well refuse to recall it.

I termed this phenomena ‘thesis brain’ and if it does happen to you rest assured you probably aren’t losing your memory and it is (mostly) reversible once you’ve submitted. The other positive of ‘thesis brain’ is that it gives you some interesting stories to tell post-submission (one of mine includes two suspected cases of Ebola – don’t ask).

3) Plan some time out.

With a deadline looming it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking ‘I don’t have time to stop’ but you do and it’s essential that you do. This doesn’t have to be a big night out and to be honest you will probably be too tired at this point anyhow. Take an hour out to have coffee with a friend or dinner with family or anything that involves communicating with another human being. Admittedly, had I read this advice six months ago I would have thought two things: a) what an obvious thing to say and b) it’s ok for you to say that but I really don’t have time. However, in the middle of submitting a thesis it’s easy to forget and although it’s taken me a long time to learn this, taking that time out will make you more productive in the long run, I promise.

4) Beware of the inevitable guilt trip.

On the subject of taking time out, this seems the perfect time to mention guilt. For me, and probably a lot of people, writing and guilt go together. From asking myself why hadn’t I read/written this before now, to ‘what on earth was I thinking taking a week off last Christmas?’: I could beat myself up about anything. About two months before submitting I realised that I was spending too much time and energy (of which I had little to spare) on asking myself why I hadn’t done something already rather than getting tasks completed now.

In the end I told myself there was time to beat myself up after submitting (although to be fair after the thesis was finished it didn’t matter anymore) and right now it was about getting on with it – this telling-off was the best thing I ever did and freed me to get on with finishing the thesis.

5) There is no right way to complete a thesis.

Of course, there are guidelines to follow and standards to be met but how you go about getting there is unique to you. Just because Bob wrote his introduction in his first year and looks at you in horror when you say you haven’t written yours 5 months before submission does not mean you are doing the PhD wrong, just that you’re approaching it in a different way, and that’s fine (really it is). Also if, like Bob, you did write a perfect introduction by the end of your first year that’s also fine but do try and keep the looks of horror to a bare minimum – they are not helpful.

6) Do not – I repeat do not – finish proofing, print, bind and post off your thesis on the submission date.

This is what I did and it was nearly my undoing (and yes I should know better). I was very lucky that this did not go terribly wrong. It will take you longer than you think to print out your thesis. In my case, this was a three-and-a-half hour printing marathon which involved much shouting at my printer (which I still cannot look at without an involuntary shudder) and cleaning the entire house because I could not stare any longer at the printer willing it to print quicker.

This resulted in me turning up at the binders 15 minutes before it shut. They (very kindly) ended up staying open 30 minutes later than normal during which time they had to deal with a slightly hyper and very tired PhD student (I still owe them a box of chocolates). Then there was the sprint to the post office before it shut at 6pm.

Do not do this. However, if this does happen to you remember you are not alone.

7) Recognising that the end is in sight.

One of the scariest things about a PhD is that it is your project and only you can write it. This is not merely scary: it can be overwhelming at times. However, in those final few months I realised that while the impending deadline was still scary, my thesis no longer was. Despite all its faults, all the things I might have done differently and all the things I still don’t know (I have a long list of all three) I had written a thesis. Four months before I submitted, I genuinely didn’t believe this was something I would achieve. However, very slowly in those last few months I began to feel that, although I still had no idea how it was going to happen, finishing my thesis was something I could do.

Those final few months are tough, there is no way around that, but for me they were also the most rewarding part of the entire PhD. In the final stages of thesis writing everything happens fast; all of a sudden, chapters go from being drafts to being finished, you find a place for the pesky bit of evidence that needed to be included but didn’t seem to fit anywhere and that perfect quote to open Chapter 5 suddenly appears from nowhere. There is nothing like seeing a project you’ve been working on for so long come together in this way. However, in the midst of submitting a thesis it’s easy not to recognise this and to ignore all the little accomplishments because all you can think about is what is left to do.

And perhaps this is the most important message I would pass on to anyone heading towards completing their thesis. No matter how stressful it is or how tired you are, take enjoyment out of seeing your thesis come together and from the knowledge that the end is in sight.

by Rebecca Fallas

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 ([email protected]) by Monday 18^th April 2016.