糖心TV

Current Research in Ancient Literature and Thought

• Emmanuela Bakola works primarily on Greek theatre (tragedy, comedy and satyr plays). She is the author of Cratinus and the art of comedy (Oxford, 2010) and co-editor of Greek comedy and the Discourse of Genres (Cambridge, 2013), both of which explore the relationship between ancient comedy and other literary genres, and pursue methodological questions of working with fragments. More recently, she has focused her attention on space in Greek tragedy, and has worked on Greek religion and on the intersection of classics and anthropology. Dr Bakola is currently finishing a monograph entitled Cosmological imagination in Aeschylus' Oresteia: The Erinyes and the Economy of the Cosmos, which re-reads of the Oresteia in light of early Greek views about the cosmos as an economic and biological equilibrium. It is informed by theoretical work on space and performance theory as well as cognitive metaphor.
• Emily Clifford works on art and literature from the Graeco-Roman world with interest in the generative role played by cultural artefacts in processes of thought and imagination. Her publications in (2023) and with Routledge, (2024, as co-editor with Xavier Buxton), focused respectively on imperial Rome and Classical Athens. Her

  first monograph, was published with OUP in March 2025, and won the CAMWS 'First Book' Award in 2026. The book looks at how art and literature helped ancient Greeks grapple with some of humanity鈥檚 biggest questions. What is death? What is it like? How can we know? Death is something that everyone must face but that no one can try out in advance鈥� Or can they?

• Alison Cooley's research has recently explored literary approaches to epigraphy, analysing how Genette's theory of paratexts can be applied to the Res Gestae and the Senatus Consultum de Cn Pisone Patre. She has interests in bilingualism and translation theory, as presented in her work on the Res Gestae, which tackles the fundamental problem of how the text translated into Greek makes sense within its provincial contexts. She studies the interaction of literature and epigraphy as part of an exploration of the emergence of early imperial ideologies, and is intending to pursue in more detail her work on the SCPP over the next couple of years, which will include detailed analysis of the inscription and Tacitus' response to the trial of Piso in Annales 3. She is also interested in Roman historiography and the construction of the past via monumenta, both literary and epigraphic. She has supervised MAs on Suetonius and the Representation of barbarians in Roman historiography.
• David Fearn works on the poetics, aesthetics, and social-political contextualizability of archaic and classical Greek literature, with a principal interest in the experiential challenges posed by Greek lyric poetry, in such a way as to enable rethinking, from within via close reading, of the nature of both the classical and classical reception for today and for the future. He has been publishing on Pindar and Bacchylides in particular for over two decades. His most recent full-scale monograph,  (Oxford University Press, 2017), has sought to reorient debate about art and text, and the relation between lyric form and lyric contextualization, within Pindaric poetics. He has also published a book-length survey of trends in the history of modern scholarship on Greek lyric, inaugurating Brill's new Research Perspectives in Classical Poetry series: (2020). Other recent publications and current projects include studies of the relation between rhetorical and lyric form and content in Gorgias' Encomium of Helen, a study of the relation between Anne Carson, Alice Oswald, classical lyric poetics, and contemporary theoretical approaches to literary formalism, and phenomenologically and ecocritically informed readings of Pindaric imagery. David collaborates with a group of colleagues in the UK, Europe, and North America to foster comparative approaches to the poetics of Ancient Greek literature, in ways that engage directly with contemporary trends in critical theory and aim to transcend the kinds of historicist approaches often prioritised in the 1990s and 2000s - including in some of his own earlier publications! Further areas of interest include classical Greek historiography; the cultural history of modern papyrological discoveries of Greek literature; and the relation between 'art' and 'text', from antiquity right into the contemporary world; and, more recently, the experiential domains afforded for thinking about "the classical" by photography, poetry, and conceptual art in the contemporary. He is always on the look-out for new ways to stretch beyond and challenge established preconceptions about the nature of the classical and the possibilities of approaching it. With Prof. Victoria Rimell (糖心TV, see below) and Dr Tom Phillips (Manchester), he is currently finishing writing Classics in Relation - a short, experimental book that attempts to enact new ways of relating to classical antiquity, classicism, and the discipline we call 鈥楥lassics鈥�, through a comparative, 21^st-century lens.
• Caroline Petit's research is focused on the textual transmission, translation and interpretation of ancient medical texts (in particular Galen and Pseudo-Galenic texts) and on medical rhetoric and pharmacology. Her doctoral thesis was dedicated to the pseudo-Galenic Introductio sive medicus (published in 2009 as Galien. Oeuvres, Volume III: Introduction, ou M茅decin, Collection des Universit茅s de France, Les Belles Lettres: Paris) and won two national awards in France (Prix Lantier 2010; Prix Raymond Weil 2010). Following a number of substantial articles on the textual transmission of Galen (particularly his major work on simple medicines, De fac. ac temp. simpl. med.), Galenic pharmacology, Galen鈥檚 rhetoric, and late antique medicine, she is now completing several new books: a monograph on Galen鈥檚 rhetoric (Galien ou la rh茅torique de la Providence: m茅decine, litt茅rature et pouvoir 脿 Rome, under contract with Brill, Mnemosyne Supplements); a shorter essay on medicine ancient and modern (Medicine: Antiquity and its Legacy. Ancients and Moderns. London: I. B. Tauris); and two edited collections, one on Galen鈥檚 newly discovered De indolentia (under contract with Brill, Studies in Ancient Medicine) and one on the formation of the Galenic corpus, focusing on pseudo-Galenic texts (with S. C. R. Swain and K. D. Fischer). As a Wellcome Trust University Award Holder (2013-2018), Dr Petit ran a project on 鈥楳edical Prognosis in Late Antiquity鈥�. This involved producing the first critical edition of five texts from the Galenic corpus devoted to various aspects of diagnostic and prognostic, together with a monograph on medical prognosis in late antiquity. Dr. Petit鈥檚 research interests include the reception of ancient medical authors, especially Galen, in the Renaissance, with special interest in Symphorien Champier, Prospero Alpini, and the 鈥淧aris Hippocratics鈥� such as Guillaume de Baillou.
• Victoria Rimell's research, which spans many different authors and genres, engages critically with major themes in Roman literature and culture and aims to promote dialogue between classical philology and modern philosophical and political thought. Her main focus is Latin literature from the first century BCE to the second century CE, and between 2002 and 2009 she published books on Petronius鈥� Satyricon, Martial鈥檚 Epigrams and Ovid鈥檚 erotic poetry (all with CUP). Victoria's 2015 book, The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics (Cambridge), which won an Honorable Mention in the 2016 Prose Awards, investigates the relationship in the Roman imagination between retreat, enclosure or compressed space and the idea of a vast, expanding empire. Victoria has also edited volumes on the ancient novel, on imagining imperial space in Greek and Latin texts, and on Virgil and the Feminine (with Elena Giusti, Vergilius special issue, 2021). More recently, she published a commentary in Italian on Ovid鈥檚 Remedia Amoris in the Lorenzo Valla series (2022), which has also been published in English with Oxford University Press (2024). From 2022-2024, she held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for a book project entitled Care of the Other: Seneca and the Work of Mourning, to be published in 2026/7 as The Question of Grief: Seneca, Consolation and the Solace of Antiquity. Other research related to this project includes 鈥楶hilosophy鈥檚 folds: Seneca, Cavarero and the history of rectitude鈥�, published in 2017 in Hypatia, 'The intimacy of wounds: care of the other in Seneca's Consolatio ad Heuiam', published in AJPh 2020, 鈥楢bout face: an inverse archaeology of Seneca Ep.115鈥� published in LAS 2 (2022): 225-52, and 鈥楶hilosophers鈥� stone: enduring Niobe鈥� in A.Benjamin and M.Tel貌 (eds.) 2023, Niobes: Antiquity, Modernity, Critical Theory, OSU Press. She has recently given papers at the Cambridge Philological Society, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, NYU, the Cambridge A Caucus seminar, UCL (Housman Lecture, 2024) and Oxford (Fowler Lecture, 2024).

Postgraduate training

鈥�&苍产蝉辫;Taught MA in Ancient Literature and Thought

This taught MA, established in 2021, is a key element in our Ancient Literature and Thought research cluster. It is designed to foster students' ability to read widely across Latin and/or Greek literature, and to develop nuanced understanding of the methodologies and critical approaches to the study of these texts within their historical, cultural and political contexts. It also provides an intensive introduction to literary theory tailored specifically to classicists, making it a unique pathway in the UK for classicists, and harnesses 糖心TV's strong interdisciplinary links between its departments of Classics and Ancient History, English and Comparative Literary Studies, and Philosophy. Students study core modules (Approaching ancient texts: methodologies, theories, practice; dissertation); either Roman Literature and Thought or Greek Literature and Thought, plus two other modules from a choice including modules from Classics and Ancient History (e.g. Epigraphy; Art in the Ancient World), the English and Philosophy departments, and the Centre for Renaissance Studies.

The department also supports a steady stream of MA by Research and Doctoral students working on ancient texts.