DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY

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Ika Willis

Photo of Ika Willis

Arts Faculty Lecturer in Reception

Phone: +44 (0)117 33 17001

Email: ika.willis@bristol.ac.uk

Research

Dr Willis works in the field of reception and critical theory. She is particularly interested in theories which address the relationships between language, technology, material space, and social/political experience: these theories include deconstruction, post-structuralism, feminism and queer theory. Within this broad theoretical framework, her work engages with both 'high' and popular culture: in particular, she works on fanfiction (particularly slash), children's literature, and Latin poetry. She ran the BIRTHA-funded workshop series Word Unbecoming Flesh (2007-2009) and is a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded Penguin Archive Project (2008-2012). Her book Now and Rome reads Vergil's Aeneid and Georgics and Lucan's On the Civil War in order to argue that political space functions by producing a context within which not only texts but actions and experiences become meaningful. Her next research project is on, not the politics, but the erotics of reception.

Dr Willis is a founder member of the Society of the Friends of the Text and a member of the Reception Study Society and the Classical Reception Studies Network. She has a blog at Now And Rome, and speaks about her work in an online video interview at Future TV.

Dr Willis would be interested in supervising PhD students working on reception and critical theory, deconstruction, fan fiction and (sub)culture, queer and trans theory, and/or the politics of Latin poetry.

Teaching

Dr Willis teaches English and Latin literature, with particular interests in critical theory and the temporality of reading. She is the Programme Co-Ordinator for the MA in Reception and Critical Theory, and teaches one of the core units on this MA. In 2010/11 she is teaching the following undergraduate units:

Publications