DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY
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About the department
Research
Ellen O'Gorman
Senior Lecturer in Classics
Phone: +44 (0)117 3317380
Email: e.c.ogorman@bristol.ac.uk
Research
Dr O’Gorman works in the field of ancient historiography and historical thought. She is particularly interested in the ways that historical thinking interacts with supposedly ‘fictional’ modes of representation, from ancient epic and myth to modern historical novels. Her first book, Irony and Misreading in the Annals of Tacitus, explored how the language of Tacitus’ historical writing enacted the ambiguities and compromises of the political regime which it represented. Her second book will be on Roman Fantasies of Carthage from Polybius to Petrarch, and will consider how the concepts of Roman imperialism were constructed around the ghostly presence of Carthage and Carthaginians.
Dr O’Gorman is interested in supervising doctoral research in ancient historical writing (particularly in the Roman period), ancient epic, Roman philosophy, and literary receptions.
Teaching
Dr O’Gorman teaches Latin language and literature, as well as courses on ancient literature in translation, myth and ancient history. In 2010/11 she is teaching the following units:- Latin Language C (Tacitus and Lucan)
- Memory, Myth and History
- Approaches to Myth
- Poetics of Civil War
- Theories and Approaches
Selected publications
- ‘Intertextuality, Time and Historical Understanding’ in Alexander Macfie (ed.) The Philosophy of History, London (2007).
- ‘Alternative Empires: Tacitus’ Virtual History of the Pisonian Principate’ Arethusa 39 (2006) 281-301.
- ‘A woman’s history of warfare’ in Vanda Zajko and Miriam Leonard (eds.), Laughing with Medusa, Oxford (2005) 189-207.
- ‘Decadence and Historical Understanding in Flaubert’s Salammbô’ New Literary History 35 (2004) 607-619.
- ‘Cato the Elder and the Destruction of Carthage’ Helios 31 (2004) 97-122.
- Irony and Misreading in the Annals of Tacitus, Cambridge (2000)
- ‘Detective fiction and historical narrative’ Greece & Rome 46 (1999) 1-8.