Odyssey week

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by Emma Bridges

Last week was, for me, a week of Odysseys. The previous weekend I’d tuned in to catch up on this recent BBC spoof of Homer’s epic of homecoming by comedy trio Penny Dreadfuls, starring Peep Show actor Robert Webb as a hilariously self-obsessed Odysseus. The week also took me to London to see two very different live performances of the ancient tale. First up, on Tuesday, was a theatrical performance at the Armitage OdysseyGlobe of Simon Armitage’s The Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead. This new version wove episodes from the ancient text – Odysseus’ encounters with a giant Cyclops, the Sirens, the Lotus Eaters, and the enchantress Circe – into a contemporary story featuring a government minister’s attempts to return home to his family after an unfortunate diplomatic incident abroad. The fusion of contemporary political drama and ancient narrative provided an insight into the possibilities which a classical text might offer for shedding fresh light on current issues, and vice-versa; in this case the themes of hospitality (and its abuse) and xenophobia loomed large, and the production – like the original Homeric text – explored the nature of storytelling from multiple perspectives, with the modern media and political spin highlighted as modern equivalents of the ways in which narratives are woven together by the ancient poet and his characters.

Then Thursday brought a very different kind of staged version of the poem. This year the Almeida Theatre’s Greeks season, consisting of productions of three Greek tragedies along with a programme of related events, has been hugely successful (you can read my interview with the theatre’s Associate Director, Robert Icke, here). To end the season the theatre staged an all-day reading of the Odyssey (in the translation of Robert Fagles) in its entirety; this followed on from a reading of the whole of the Iliad back in August. The Odyssey, read by sixty actors including such stellar names as Ian McKellen, Simon Russell Beale and Miranda Richardson, took its performers and audiences on an ‘odyssey’ of their own around London, both on foot and in various modes of transport including a London bus, several black cabs, a boat on the Thames and even the London Eye (where it was a stroke of genius to set the Cyclops episode).

Waiting to board for our Odyssey along the Thames.

Waiting to board for our Odyssey along the Thames.

Four key locations were open to live audiences, while the whole event was livestreamed online. I was lucky enough to get a seat on the boat trip up the Thames, during which I was treated to a series of actors reading the section of the story beginning with Odysseus’ arrival among the Phaeacians; then I, like thousands of others, managed to catch much of the rest of the day’s action online via the livestream and on Twitter (for a flavour, and for comments by those who shared in the experience from locations around the world, take a look at the Twitter feed for @almeidaodyssey or search #Odyssey).

Almeida Odyssey

 

 

 

 

 

That this durational reading (it lasted from 9am until after 9pm, when it ended in a bar in Islington at which the Almeida team were holding their end-of-season party) of an epic poem which is over two and a half thousand years old had such reach and generated such a buzz (remarkably, #Odyssey was trending on Twitter for much of the day) was due in large part to the capacity which modern technology has for facilitating mass communication and fostering collective experience; this was on a scale far beyond anything which might have been imagined by the bards who originally sang the Homeric tales. It was also a reminder of the power of a good story to entertain and enthral. The Odyssey has it all – monsters and magic, peril and heroism, pathos and humour, as well as a colourful cast of characters both mortal and divine – and that is perhaps why it has proved to be such a rich source of inspiration for writers and artists ever since its original composition.

During my week of Odysseys, I’d also asked followers on Twitter to share their favourite modern receptions of the Odyssey – suggestions ranged from the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? to Margaret Atwood’s novel The Penelopiad and the 1980s children’s television series Ulysses 31. I’d love to hear your suggestions too, either in comments on this post or over on Twitter, where you can find me @emmabridges.

Update 16th December 2015: You can now watch the Almeida Odyssey reading in its entirety online here.

 

CHASE Studentships – 2016 Round Now Open!

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Calling all motivated, independent-minded enthusiasts of Classical Studies: Are you interested in doing a PhD with us, but don’t have the finances to fund yourself? All is not lost!

The Open University is a member of the CHASE Consortium (alongside the Courtauld Institute of Art and Goldsmith’s College at the University of London and the Universities of East Anglia, Essex, Kent and Sussex) which offers fully funded PhD studentships for UK students. (For EU students the award covers fees only.)

The new round for entry in October 2016 has just been opened.

CHASE studentships offer generous funding for skills training programmes and allow you to network with students and scholars in the other CHASE institutions via workshops and an annual conference.

Please note that in order to qualify for a CHASE studentship you need first to have applied to do a PhD in Classical Studies at the OU in the usual way by the deadline of 13th January 2016.

The CHASE selection forms a second tier and candidates will be informed whether or not they have been sucessful in April 2016.

If you are interested, please get in touch with the Classical Studies department’s Postgraduate Coordinator, Dr Ursula Rothe (ursula.rothe@open.ac.uk) as soon as possible to discuss your research proposal.

To find out more about applying to do a PhD in Classical Studies at the OU, visit our Postgraduate webpage at http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/classical-studies/postgrad.shtml

To find out more about the CHASE studentships at the OU, go to http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/classical-studies/chase-studentships.shtml

And to find out more about CHASE, visit the consortium website at http://www.chase.ac.uk/

Perspectives: the Classical Studies Postgraduate Work in Progress Day 2015

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by Liz Webb

Liz WebbMy name is Liz Webb and I have recently completed the Open University’s MA in Classical Studies. It has been a wonderful, enriching experience, the highlight of which was the module requiring a dissertation on a subject of our choosing. For me, this led to a rewarding year exploring vision and hearing in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.

During the year, I responded to an email inviting postgraduate students to present at the 2015 Postgraduate Work in Progress Day but I had little idea how many different perspectives on the Classical world would be revealed. I had started my research in February and, having had my proposal signed off and submitted my introduction and first chapter, I condensed my ideas into a 15 minute presentation. After a trial run with a willing, if small, audience at home, I was ready to go. One huge benefit of the process was thought clarification. Having explained my topic to non-Classicists, I had distilled it down to the essentials.

On the day of the seminar our welcome by the Classical Studies team couldn’t have been warmer. Over coffee we made our introductions and got to know each other before the main business of the day started. We enjoyed a wide range of presentations including topics such as movements in cursing rituals, cultural memory in Plato’s Theaetetus, choral utterances in Sophocles, the impact of immersion on learning ancient languages, and obesity in the Hippocratic corpus. It was a thought provoking reminder of the diversity of the department. The breadth of topics also revealed the interdisciplinary nature of research being carried out. Issues of material and textual evidence were discussed alongside questions of ancient and modern reception. The theme of the individual in classical society, both in a physical and intellectual sense, seemed to be a common thread running through many of the presentations.

When it was my turn to present, the presentation flew by and in no time at all we had reached audience’s questions. This really was the most helpful part of the day for me. The questions, which were challenging, raised subjects for me to research more widely. Other attendees recommended books they had used which they thought might be helpful and, indeed, some of these recommendations are proving invaluable. The seminar was also interesting for those who wanted to find out more about pursuing Classical Studies further. It was fascinating to hear the perspective of a presenter who has started the new Masters course. Also, for anyone thinking of studying for a PhD, it was a terrific opportunity to find out more about research methods and how other students have chosen to develop their themes over time.

Further benefits of attending the seminar emerged afterwards for me on a more personal level. It gave food for thought as to how more varied approaches might support my dissertation or future presentations. Some presenters shared handouts with quotations and translations, others used site plans, while some had a more data driven approach. It provided an interesting challenge to think how some of these methods might be relevant to researching Thucydides. Additionally, reflecting on which areas of my presentation had provoked wider discussion provided further focus for my work subsequently.

The Postgraduate Work in Progress Day provided a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the world of Classical Studies. I’d recommend the experience to anyone involved in postgraduate research at the OU. It’s such a friendly environment for testing out ideas while they are genuinely “in progress” and stimulates consideration of further directions, emphases and perspectives for taking research to its next level.

Editor’s note: If you’d like to find out more about pursuing a postgraduate qualification in Classical Studies at the Open University have a look at the information on postgraduate research here.

Workshop: Multitudo: a multisensory, multilayered and multidirectional approach to classical studies

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Saturday 21st November 2015, 9.30am-6pm at Roehampton University

Organisers: Alessandra Abbattista (Roehampton) alessandra.abbattista@hotmail.it and Eleanor Betts (OU): eleanor.betts@open.ac.uk

We are pleased to announce that registration for Multitudo is now open. This one-day workshop brings together postgraduate students and early career researchers interested in taking a multidisciplinary approach to sensory studies of Greek and Roman societies. The objective of the workshop is to explore the value of applying sensory approaches to the material and literary evidence of the ancient world, and to illustrate how they complement and/or contradict each other. In particular, the workshop will demonstrate a range of methodologies and approaches which may be applied to different literary and archaeological contexts, with a focus on how empirical sensory data may combine, or at times conflict, with that of ancient sources.

There is no fee for attending the workshop, but all attendants must register. Please do register via https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/multitudo-tickets-18818572858. The deadline for registration is the 15th of November. We welcome a participative audience and with the support of the Classical Association are pleased to be able to offer a small number of student bursaries to eligible presenters and participants. If you would like to be considered for a bursary, please send a request to Alessandra Abbattista (alessandra.abbattista@hotmail.it) or Eleanor Betts (eleanor.betts@open.ac.uk), indicating your status and the cost of your travel and/or accommodation expenses, when you register for the workshop.

We are keen to attract undergraduate, MA and PhD students to the workshop, from Classical Studies and other disciplines, so please advertise it as widely as you can. If using Twitter, please use the hashtag #multitudo15.

The full programme and registration details are available on our website:

http://sensorystudiesinantiquity.com/2015/09/28/multitudo-a-multisensory-multilayered-and-multidirectional-approach-to-classical-studies/

See also: http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/Courses/Humanities/Calendar—Humanities/Workshop—Multitudo–a-multisensory,-multilayered-and-multidirectional-approach-to-classical-studies/

For further information please do not hesitate to contact us: Alessandra Abbattista (alessandra.abbattista@hotmail.it) or Eleanor Betts (eleanor.betts@open.ac.uk).

Programme:

9.30-10 Registration and coffee

10-10.10 Introduction: Alessandra Abbattista & Eleanor Betts

Panel 1: Embodied Performance

Chair: Eleanor Betts

10.10-10.50

Alessandra Abbattista & Giacomo Savani

“The Multisensory Metamorphosis of a Thracian King”

Metamorphosis – ancient Greek tragedy – funeral mourning – myth of Procne

Fabio Lo Piparo

“Blowing Through the Gorgon Mask: a Reading of the Cassandra Episode in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon”

Aeschylus’ Agamemnon – Cassandra – aulos – Gorgon mask – Tony Harrison’s Oresteia 

10.50-11.30

Helen Slaney

“Kinaesthesia as Methodology”

Dance – sculpture – movement – aesthetics – reception – cognition – enactment – embodiment – haptic – tactility – interactive

Anna Trostnikova

“Multisensory Experience of Audiences at Roman Religious Festivals. Spectators or Participants?”

Theatre – collective experience – ritual vs performance – lex iulia theatralis – crowd behaviour – production of space

 

11.30-11.40 Coffee

 

Panel 2: Smell, Taste and Touch

Chair: Giacomo Savani

11.40-12.20

Catherine Hoggarth

“Crossing the Multisensory Bridge”

bridges – urban – rural – multisensory – multidisciplinary – risk – comparative approaches – value – reconstruction – methodologies

Stuart McKie

“Practical Magic: How, Where and When to Curse a Thief in Roman Britain”

Magic – Roman Britain – curse tablets – ritual – experimental archaeology – movement – gesture

12.20-1.00

Marta Garcia-Morcillo

“Feeling the Market in Ancient Rome”

Smell – hearing – product recognition – competition – social status – performance – interaction – atmosphere – daily life

Patty Baker

“Tasting Roman Food: Experimental Archaeology”

Taste – senses – reenactment – experimental archaeology – recipes – environmental remains

 

1.00-1.40 Lunch

 

Panel 3: Sights and Sounds

Chair: Alessandra Abbattista

1.40-2.20

Orestis Mitintzis

“Visual Aspects in the Experience of Pilgrimage in the Ancient Greek World”

Pilgrimage – pilgrim – sight – nature – sanctuary – buildings – votives – cult statue – Classical and Hellenistic world

Matteo Olivieri

“The Song of the Maidens of Delos: Homage to the Identities of the Pilgrims of Apollo?”

Delos – sanctuary – religious festival – cult – regional sanctuary – Apollo, Artemis and Leto – Delian Maidens – Homeric hymn to Apollo – choral lyric – mimetic performance – dance – ethnic identity – polis identity – Ionian – Cyclades islands – Aegean sea – Greek language & dialects

2.20-3.00

Francesca Berlinzani

“An Acoustic Problem of the Ps. Aristot. ΠΕΡΙ ΦΩΝΗΣ. Between Auditive and Visuospatial Perception”

Ancient acoustics – Aristotle – formants – echo – resonance – sound perception

Jeff Veitch

“Hearing Architecture: Sound Samples in Architectural Context”

aural architecture – acoustics – sound perception – Roman buildings – sound samples

3.00-3.30

Jasmine Parker & Eleanor Betts

“A Phenomenology of Visual Perception”

 

3.30-3.40 Coffee

 

Panel 4: Theorising the Senses

Chair: Jeff Veitch

3.40-4.20

John Harrison

“The Stourhead Temple of the Nymph: a Multisensory Experience”

Grotto – Stourhead – nymphaeum – multisensory – synaesthesia – kinaesthesia – vision – audition – olfaction – thermoception

Hannah Platts

“Sensing and Feeling at Home: Multisensory Approaches to the Roman Domestic Realm”

Multisensory – insula – domestic – home – status – identity (belonging) – Roman

4.20-5.00

Kelli Rudolph

“Method and Theory in Ancient Sensory Studies”

Ancient methodologies: analogy – polarity – inference – theoretical positions: status of qualities – the relations between contraries – notions of elements; understanding of ancient approaches to study of the senses

Emma-Jayne Graham

“Objective Senses and Sensory Objectives in the Graeco-Roman World”

Objective/subjective senses – texts/materials – metaphor/experience – perception/description

5.00-5.20 Closing discussion

5.20-6.00 Drinks reception

 

Introducing our Classical Studies students

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Although at the OU we don’t always get to meet our students face-to-face (but see here for an insight into how our teaching is carried out), here in the Classical Studies department we enjoy finding alternative opportunities for engaging with the people who are studying our modules. One way in which we do this is through the use of online2015-03-09 001 2015-03-09 002 forums. This summer several members of the department ran an online discussion forum aimed at students who are making the transition from Level 1 study to our Level 2 modules (the equivalent of the step up from first- to second-year undergraduate study elsewhere); the forum was a place where we could offer help and advice, and share our enthusiasm for the subject, and it also allowed our students to make contact with each other before the online forums for their individual modules opened. As a result we ‘met’ a whole range of students who form this year’s cohort. As always they’re a diverse bunch, spread over a wide geographical area, and with a variety of reasons for undertaking Open University study – there is no such thing as the ‘typical OU student’. We asked them to introduce themselves and to tell us a little bit about why they’ve chosen to study with us, so here are a few of their stories:

– Sasha, who lives near Leicester, told us that, with four young children and another on the way, the OU enables her to combine studying with raising a family in a way that would not be possible via a ‘brick’ university; having enjoyed the classical elements of the OU’s interdisciplinary Level 1 Arts module (in which students encounter, among other things, Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato, Cleopatra and Roman archaeology) she has decided to pursue a single honours Classical Studies degree.

– Several students cited a lifelong interest in ancient Greece and Rome as their inspiration for beginning formal study. Brian recalled a school trip to Chester and studying Latin at ‘O’ Level in the 1970s as fuelling his enthusiasm, and, having studied several history modules with the OU, is 150hornblower[1]now embarking on Exploring the Classical World, our wide-reaching Level 2 module which introduces our students to the literature, history and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Trevor, who is studying the same module from his home in the Scottish Highlands, told us that he’s been studying with the OU since 2013; he’s enjoying reading all manner of ancient texts and plans to go on to study our Level 3 module Myth in the Greek and Roman Worlds next year. Another of our students, Alisha, lives in Switzerland, and dropped in to tell us that she’ll be studying the myth module along with our brand new Level 3 module The Roman Empire. Philip in west Wales, meanwhile, is a local guide who spends a lot of time talking to tour groups about the Roman heritage of his town, so he’s joined us in order to find out more about the Greeks and Romans.v2a21923[1]

– Our new Level 2 Latin module, which we are offering for the first time this year, has been eagerly anticipated, and we met several students who are looking forward to learning the ancient language. Among them are those for whom the study of the language offers them the opportunity to enhance their understanding of the ancient world, and others who plan to study Latin as a way of complementing their knowledge of a variety of modern languages.

– Meanwhile we also give our students the opportunity to learn ancient Greek, with a module which teaches the language from beginners’ level as well as allowing students to gain a deeper understanding of some key literary texts by reading them in translation. Gale told us that, having retired after a long career in the NHS, she now has the time to take up formal study; she confessed to feeling a little daunted by the challenge of studying ancient Greek but is fascinated by the ways in which the ancient world continues to influence our own society.

If you’d like to know more about what we offer please visit our departmental website, where you’ll find information on our modules and courses (at both undergraduate and postgraduate level) as well as free taster materials and contact information.

Wishing all our students the very best of luck with their studies for the coming year!

Publication announcement: War as Spectacle

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War as SpectacleThis autumn sees the publication of an edited volume to which several members of the OU Classical Studies department have contributed. War as Spectacle: Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Display of Armed Conflict  (Bloomsbury) originated in an OU conference organised by Anastasia Bakogianni during her time in the department, and is co-edited by Anastasia and Valerie Hope, as well as featuring essays by Laura Swift, Naoko Yamagata and Emma Bridges.

The book takes an interdisciplinary and transhistorical approach, comprising eighteen essays which examine the ways in which war was presented as a multi-sensory spectacle in ancient texts and material culture as well as considering the reception of ancient conflicts since antiquity. Themes include the spectacle of combat in epic and lyric poetry, historiography and commemorative monuments as well as post-classical responses to ancient warfare, with chapters on film and the media, theatre and political propaganda.

To mark the publication of War as Spectacle Anastasia has recorded two interviews for Classics Confidential. You can see Sonya Nevin talking about her work animating hoplite scenes on ancient vase paintings here, and Anastasia talks here about her own chapter discussing the Euripidean anti-war trilogy of film director Michael Cacoyannis.

Thinking through theatre

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by Emma Bridges

This week I’ve been lucky enough to see productions of two Greek tragedies in London. The first, Euripides’ Bakkhai, was at the Almeida Theatre; the second, a version of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, was also an Almeida production but after a highly successful run earlier in the summer it has now transferred to Trafalgar Studios in the West End. The experience of watching, on consecutive days, two very different plays whose production and performance contrasted strikingly with one another, set me thinking about what we can take away from actually seeing a performance of a play rather than simply reading it as a text on a page.

Bakkhai progAs a classicist with a particular interest in the reception of Greek literature I spend a lot of time thinking about how the context in which a text is written/read/viewed/performed/rewritten affects both the appearance of the text itself and an audience’s response to it. When we look at Greek tragedy and its manipulation of ancient myths (themselves fluid stories which did not have a fixed form, but which evolved depending on who was telling the story, to whom, and the context in which it was being told) this becomes interesting in all sorts of ways. For me, one of the things which makes tragedy so thought-provoking is the way in which it takes themes which are universally applicable to the human condition, and looks at some heavy moral questions (What is justice? Who gets to decide who lives and who dies? Are divine laws more important than those made by humans?). These questions, which exercised the theatregoers of fifth-century Athens, are not confined to one era or geographical location. This is precisely why Athenian tragedy can be transferred to new contexts, and why it has enjoyed a long and varied performance history.

Bakkhai – in the translation of Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson – took what might be described as a fairly traditional approach to the staging of the play, in which the god Dionysus, walking the earth in disguise as a mortal, wreaks terrible revenge upon those who deny his divinity. This production broadly maintained the structure of Euripides’ original text and made use of a full Chorus, whose note-perfect singing was one of the highlights of the play; their odes, echoing the themes of the play – nature versus civilisation, irrationality and madness versus rationality and sanity, belief in the gods versus scepticism – provoked for me a series of reflections on the significance of religious ritual in the original performances of tragedy and offered an insight into how this might have appeared when performed in the Theatre of Dionysus in the fifth century BC. By contrast, the Oresteia – a new version by the Almeida’s Associate Director Robert Icke, Oresteia progwhich condensed the three separate plays of Aeschylus’ trilogy into one new play – was undeniably contemporary in both its setting and its structure, with Agamemnon reimagined as a modern politician whose actions as he carries out his civic duty have unbearable consequences which rock the foundations of his family and reverberate down the generations. In watching both plays I was struck overwhelmingly by how many of the questions which these stories raise have their equivalents in our own generation. Bakkhai, for example,focuses on the nature of religious belief, or superstition, and asks why some embrace it, yet others scorn or fear it. Meanwhile the Oresteia raises questions about loyalty and sacrifice, asking whether one death can ever be excused if it saves countless other lives, and whether revenge can ever be justified or appropriate.

Ultimately what makes these dramas so gripping is that they are essentially human stories, and there is a sense in which the viewers of a play see elements of themselves, and their own world, reflected back to them. This week I was beguiled by a disquieting Dionysus who was by turns charismatic and sinister; I recoiled at the horror of Agave’s slaughter – blinded by Bacchic madness – of her son Pentheus; I shared in Agamemnon’s conflicted loyalties and his impossible moral dilemma as he sacrificed his daughter for the sake of his army; and I lived through Clytemnestra’s maternal anguish as she wreaked her bloody revenge for the death of her child. That live performance of tragedy still has the ability to engender strong emotional responses and provoke profound reflection reminds us of the enduring power of these ancient narratives millennia after they were first conceived.

Introducing…Sophie Raudnitz, PhD student

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sophieJust over 23 years ago, I received the advance reading list for my undergraduate degree in English. At the top of the list was the Odyssey. I remember reading it during the lazy summer holiday between ‘A’ Levels and university, dutifully at first but soon sucked in to the twists and turns of the story. As my degree progressed, I began to realise the extent to which it underlies our literary tradition and my interest in cultural, or ‘literary’, memory began to take root.

Now, I am coming to the end of the first year of my PhD with the OU and my project has memory at its centre. The title is ‘Tracing the Establishment of Political Society: Remembering and Forgetting in Ancient Greek Literature’ and it starts with the premise that memory is a political process, taking place in a political environment, one which memory itself helps to engender. I was fortunate enough to get funding for this project from the OU and have two fantastic supervisors from the Classical Studies Department (Elton Barker and Helen King) and a third supervisor – a specialist in Memory Studies – from the English Department at Goldsmiths (Rick Crownshaw).

My topic evolved out of an essay on Justice in the Odyssey which I wrote at the end of the first year of my MA in Classical Studies, also with the Open University. (At that time, my three children were very small and I little thought that I would do more than that one module of the MA, let alone go on to do a PhD.) I began to notice that an analysis of the different memory groups inside and outside the poem – suitors, suitors’ families, Odysseus, the audience – might offer a more interesting and nuanced interpretation of Homeric justice than I had yet come across. After this, I knew that I wanted to be the one to do that work.

I have spent this year adventuring on the high seas of memory theory, trying to navigate a path through research in Social Studies, Psychology, History and Literary Studies around terms such as social memory, cultural memory, myth and tradition. Some ideas have called me with the song of the Sirens, luring me onto the academic rocks, while others have sped me on with power of the West Wind to make new connections and to give me the feeling that progress is being made. I have developed an interpretive process based on my reading which involves: i) looking at literary representations of remembering and forgetting and considering the ways in which they contribute to the formation of political identities within texts; ii) examining the ways in which the audience’s or reader’s memories of other texts or of historical events might affect their interpretations of texts and, by extension, how this might make them reflect on and, even, seek to change their own political environments; and iii) analysing the ways in which texts themselves were remembered, for example in quotations or allusions in other texts and what this might tell us about the changing political climate in which they were created and received.

I have also been testing out this interpretive process on a range of primary texts, developing my analysis into papers for presentation at postgraduate conferences. At the OU Classical Studies Postgraduate Conference in April I spoke about Plato’s Theaetetus and the image of the wax tablet as a metaphor for memory – one which recalls memories of tragedy in its language and is itself remembered in Aristotle and Freud. Here I also reflected on the potential offered by memory for thinking through the seeming paradox presented by Plato’s written philosophy and the Socratic dialectic his writings espouse. I also delivered a paper at a postgraduate conference based around the topic of ‘Looking Back and Looking Forward’ at King’s College, London. This paper focused on Euripides’ Trojan Women and, in particular on his depiction of a present in which time is suspended, from which characters remember their pasts and reflect on their futures, prompting the audience to do likewise. In both cases, remembering is more than simply recalling. It is a process of recreation in a specific political situation which demands reflection and debate: a political process which re-members society. Both experiences were hugely beneficial (if incredibly daunting in the anticipation) not only for drawing my ideas together but for getting a sense of the work in which others in the field are engaged.

At present, I am still forecasting with blithe confidence that this will be a cross-generic study, encompassing Homeric epic, drama, historiography and philosophy, though perhaps I’ll be forced to abandon some aspects of the study by the wayside. Cross your fingers for me that, even if trouble may lie ahead, I may find my way ‘home’!

by Sophie Raudnitz