DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY

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• Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts
• Bristol Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition

Research information

We study the classical world and how classical culture has been received, interpreted and reworked in other times and cultures, including our own. Research specialisms include:

• Myth and religion
• Reception and classical tradition in textual and visual culture
• History and historiography, especially late antiquity, intellectual history, and the ancient economy
• Literature and critical theory, especially psychology

Myth and religion

Classical Myth and Psychoanalysis, the 2009 Bristol Myth Conference, was organised by Vanda Zajko and Ellen O’Gorman.

Richard Buxton is President of the LIMC Foundation, which publishes an illustrated lexicon of ancient myth and is an editor of ThesCRA, which documents the evidence for religious rituals. His most recent book is on metamorphosis.

Robert Fowler edits the fragments of early Greek mythography and Sarah Hitch works on Greek sacrificial ritual. Shelley Hales is working on Aphrodite and Dionysus in Roman domestic art. Silke Knippschild works on the destruction of religious identifiers, such as images and temples, in the first millennium BC. Gillian Clark and Bella Sandwell both work on the interaction of classical and Christian religion in late antiquity. Gillian Clark directs the AHRC-funded international project for a print and web-based commentary on Augustine City of God and also works on the Platonist philosopher Porphyry. Bella Sandwell has published on identity and religious interaction, especially in Libanius and John Chrysostom, and has a new project on preaching, communication and cognitive psychology.

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Reception and classical tradition in textual and visual culture

This is an interdisciplinary located in the Institute for Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition, which hosts research events and funds postdoctoral studentships. Bristol pioneered the study of classical reception and is a founder member of the AHRC-funded Classical Reception Studies Network.

• Ika Willis directs the MA in Reception and is a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded Penguin Archive Project, working with her project student Robert Crowe on Penguin Classics.
• Charles Martindale and David Hopkins are coediting the 5-volume Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature.
• Pantelis Michelakis works on the reception of Greek tragedy on stage and screen, in association with the Oxford-based Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama .
• Shelley Hales works on the reception of Pompeii and Nicoletta Momigliano on the reception of Minoan culture.
• Silke Knippschild works with colleagues in Germany and Spain on classical reception in the visual and performing arts.

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History and historiography, especially late antiquity, intellectual history, and the ancient economy

Neville Morley works on the ancient economy and its reception in the nineteenth century, especially by Marx and Nietzsche, and on theoretical and philosophical approaches to the writing of history. He is especially interested in the reception of Thucydides, and will be directing the AHRC-funded project, 'Thucydides: Reception, Interpretation, and Influence.' Gillian Clark and Bella Sandwell also focus on late antiquity in their research on classical and Christian religions.

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Literature and critical theory, especially psychology

Duncan Kennedy works on Latin literature, time, and science studies, and co-edits New Directions in Classics with Charles Martindale.

Genevieve Liveley works on time and narrative, especially in Latin elegy, and on feminist criticism. Vanda Zajko works on twentieth century reception of Greek literature, with special interests in myth, psychoanalysis and feminism. Ika Willis works primarily on Latin literature, with a special interest in the impact of recorded sound and image on theories of reading and writing. Kurt Lampe works on the relations among creativity, pleasure, knowledge, and truth in the interpretation of Latin literature and Greek and Latin philosophy. Steve D'evelyn works on theories of gift-exchange in classical and medieval Latin poetry.

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