© Clare Youngman: From the collaborative project, ‘Antipodean Antiquities’ – Watt Space Gallery, 2016.
It’s terrifically exciting to have been invited to take part in the Australasian ‘takeover’ of the CRSN blog for while! The invite, spearheaded by Henry Stead and kindly endorsed by the CRSN executive committee members, provides Australasian scholars with an opportunity to share the breadth and depth of their Classical Reception Studies (CRS) research. The network’s commitment to research and career development of graduate students and early career scholars also provides an important platform from which Australasian Classicists can broadcast their voices via the blog ‘takeover.’
For the duration of the ‘takeover,’ we intend to feature new and emerging voices in Australasian CRS research, as well as those of established scholars. To this end, we will be showcasing some of the most exciting projects of the recent past, and also the present, from Australian and New Zealand universities where research in the field has increased markedly over the last decade. As CRS is beginning to make a mark in undergraduate courses ‘down under’ – be it in the form of specific courses or integrated into existing ones – the blog will also provide a space to share teaching innovations, pedagogies and ideas. And, of course, there will be links to Antipodean organisations and news of events.
In the meantime, as colleagues are busy preparing contributions for the year, we’re kickstarting the blog with CRS happenings in our home institution, The University of Newcastle, Australia, where several graduate students are working in the field of Classical Reception Studies. With a strong and active graduate cohort, the CRS network at Newcastle has been able to generate some exciting events over the last few years, including a fabulous visit by Henry Stead in 2019, which involved a research student workshop and Henry’s guest lecture on Jack Lindsay and the Classical Tradition.
If you would like to contribute, advertise events, or raise queries through this blog, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us via email:
marguerite.johnson@newcastle.edu.au
Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, The University of Newcastle
Adam Turner, PhD (Cultural Studies), The University of Newcastle
Meet the CRS team at The University of Newcastle, Australia
As part of the Australasian takeover, our first blog features the activities of postgraduates at The University of Newcastle and their work in Classical Reception Studies.
Marguerite Johnson (Professor of Classics)
I’m a cultural historian with particular interest in gender and sexuality, women in antiquity, and magic and witchcraft. My research is always driven by ancient texts, and I develop ideas – be they historical/cultural or literary or a combination of both – from the texts themselves. My research in Classical Reception Studies is focussed on the Classical Tradition in early colonial Australia and, besides that, by interests predominantly relating to issues of gender and sexuality. Classical Reception Studies has enabled me to pursue my major research themes through a variety of media, from the Beat poets, to contemporary British poetry, to the lesbian salons of nineteenth and twentieth-century Paris. For my 2019 edited collection, Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Reception Down Under (Bloomsbury), please see: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Adam Turner (PhD Cultural Studies)
My PhD looks at the role of classical monsters in fantasy video games based on interdisciplinary research that combines Classical Reception, Media Studies and Cultural Studies. As a result, I’m actually enrolled in a PhD in Cultural Studies, working with Dr Rebecca Beirne, my primary supervisor, and Professor Marguerite Johnson, my secondary supervisor. In particular, I examine the ways in which the monster is able to subvert typical boundaries placed upon human characters through virtue of their innate and essential ‘otherness’, and how myth and folklore have been adapted to suit new narratives. My research is indictive of the varied approaches undertaken by postgraduates working in the area of Classical Reception Studies at The University of Newcastle. As a cohort, we tend to go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries as we also look at modern media and cultures, applying varied theoretical and methodological approaches. An early example of our boundary-crossing involved our collaboration with photomedia students at The University of Newcastle, which resulted in an exhibition at one of our university galleries, Watt Space based on the repositioning of Greek mythology in digitized contexts. Along with Tanika Koosmen and Nicole Kimball, I worked with photomedia students who produced Australian-based/Classically-inspired art while we wrote the wall captions. A taste of the outcomes can be seen in this snapshot taken from the advertising material below. I have also written for The Conversation.
I run the website, ‘Folklore at UoN’ with fellow-postgrad, Tanika Koosmen.
@ATurneresearch
Nicole Kimball (PhD Classics)
My research examines the changing nature of the witch archetype throughout history, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey and traversing texts from Early Modern Europe, the Renaissance, through to popular culture and contemporary fiction, including the Harry Potter and Charmed franchises. As a student of Classics as well as Classical Reception Studies, the focus of my study is on representations of Greek and Roman witches and the influence these have had on the archetype in later works. I am supervised by Professor Marguerite Johnson, and my co-supervisor, Associate Professor Caroline Webb, from the discipline of Literary Studies. I presented my research on the Classical influences on the Malleus Maleficarum in a paper titled, ‘Ancient Memories, Ancient Nightmares: Memory of the Witch in the Malleus Maleficarum’ at the 2019 Pacific Rim Latin Literature Conference.
@nicoleskimball
Natalia Polikarpova (PhD Classics)
I’m an international PhD candidate from Russia working on the extent to which social constructions of gender have influenced the elaboration of a complex and ramified attitude toward the phenomenon of death in Seneca the Younger’s oeuvre. I am supervised by Professor Marguerite Johnson and my co-supervisor is Professor Roger Markwick, a specialist in Soviet History. As my research is built around the body of work of a particular ancient author, it does not require any fully-fledged component of Classical Reception. However, due to the relative novelty of Classical Reception Studies in my home country, my research interests include looking at both adaptations of Stoicism to Russian socio-cultural discourse, and non-philosophical manifestations of Classical antiquity in Soviet and post-Soviet popular culture. The latter, for instance, has been reflected in my 2018 paper “The History of “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” Monument – a Study in Classical Reception”, delivered at the conference “Future Directions in Australian Classical Receptions” in Newcastle and available online, at: “Brave New Classics: Classics, Communism and World Culture”.
natalia.polikarpova@uon.edu.au
Tanika Koosmen (PhD Classics)
My doctoral research focuses on the development of the man-to-wolf metamorphic tradition in the Greco-Roman corpus, and its impact on modern werewolf fiction. My work concerns the symbolic meanings behind transformation, and how the developing concepts of ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’ influence the depictions of the werewolf alongside its human neighbours. My supervisor is Professor Marguerite Johnson, and my co-supervisors, from the discipline of French Studies, are Associate Professor Alistair Rolls and Dr Marie-Laure Vuaille-Barcan. My research interests are vast, and include folklore studies, posthumanism, and changing perspectives on the body and its place in the modern world. I’ve presented at several conferences and a contributor to public history publications, including The Conversation. I am also the inaugural recipient of ‘The Odyssey Travel Scholarship’ – a new scholarship for postgraduate students of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Newcastle to enable them to travel to Greece, Italy, Spain, Southern France, Turkey, Croatia, Albania or Cyprus as part of their research.
tanika.koosmen@newcastle.edu.au
@tanika_mk
Ruth McKimmie (PhD Classics)
Drawing upon my previous PhD in Psychology, my recent Classical Reception and Creative Writing Honours project retold the story of Medea, setting it in a colonial Australian lunatic asylum. Now undertaking my second PhD., in Classical Receptions, I am continuing to draw on psychology as I consider how the ancient Greeks treated, discussed and expressed madness in their literary works. I am juxtaposing these views with modern psychological explanations and discussions on madness. This will culminate in further creative work which explores the similarities and differences between the modern and classical understandings and expressions of madness. For this interdisciplinary project, I am working with Professor Marguerite Johnson and Dr Michael Sala, an award-winning author and Lecturer in Creative Writing. Some of my research was presented in the paper, ‘Receiving Medea: melding ancient and modern receptions with colonial psychiatry’ at the Australasian Society for Classical Studies Conference in 2019. ruth.mckimmie@uon.edu.au
@ruthmckimmie
Jessica Alexander-Lillicrap (PhD Classics)
I am completing my PhD on a practice-based research project involving workshopped translations of Euripides’ Helen and Iphigenia Amongst the Taurians. My principal supervisor is Professor Michael Ewans, and my co-supervisor is Professor Marguerite Johnson. I have recently spent time in Epidaurus in Greece, workshopping Greek theatre as part of the program called Epidaurus Lyceum, a summer school for theatre practitioners with a focus on ancient theatre. It’s a two-week program with 100 participants from all over the world, run jointly between the Athens-Epidaurus festival and the University of the Peloponnese. A video capture from the summer school is available at: https://youtu.be/REcsq7GYPMk I presented a paper on my PhD workshops as well as some of my research findings resulting from attending Epidaurus Lyceum in a paper titled, ‘Stage of Opportunity: Euripides’ Helen as a case study to examine the staging opportunities in an amphitheatre’ at the 2020 Conference for the Australasian Society for Classics Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand.
jessica.alexander-lillicrap@uon.edu.au
Connie Skibinski (PhD Classics)
My PhD is an in-depth study of the characterisation of the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, utilising reception theory and feminist theory. In it I explore the transmission of ancient mythology in early modern and modern texts, as I examine representations of Penthesilea in antiquity (Greece and Rome); Renaissance Italy and England; modern German drama and opera; and 20th century British poetry. My supervisor is Professor Marguerite Johnson and my co-supervisor is Professor Michael Ewans. My research interests include ancient mythology (particularly hybrid/ theriomorphic creatures and women characters) and the representation of the ancient world in both popular culture (TV shows, movies, video games) and modern literature.
Madelaine Sacco (Hons: Classics and Creative Writing)
I am an interdisciplinary Honours student, working with Professor Marguerite Johnson and Dr Michael Sala. My Honours thesis combines Classical Reception Studies with Creative Writing with a focus on the evolution of the figure of the merman from a type of sea god, through to a queer cultural icon. I am particularly interested in the symbolisms, imagery and narratives of mermen in literary texts, audio visual, and visual media as a means of examining the evolution of the figure. My creative work further examines this translation of classical symbols and beings in order to question to the meaning and values of contemporary humanity, morality, and the role of the ‘other’. I presented some of this research in a paper titled, ‘The Treatment of Monsters as “Other” in Science Fiction’, at the Australasian Council for Undergraduate Research Conference in 2019. [PHOTO] [Caption: Erica, r., and Madelaine, l., Australasian Council for Undergraduate Research Conference]
Gabrielle Brash (Hons: Classics)
I work on the evolution of fairy tale motifs over centuries, ranging from the Odyssey and The Golden Ass through to the Brothers Grimm and into the 20th and 21st Centuries with Disney. I am particularly interested in the role of violence in folklore, myths and subsequently fairy tales, which is the subject of my Honours thesis. To this end, I work – not only on categorizing folkloric/literary violence into discernible patterns – but also on the perceived ‘acceptability’ of such narrative violence for different audiences.
@GabrielleBrash
Erica Wright (BA: Classics and Literary Studies)
As I balance my young family with part-time study, I have been a long-standing member of many of our Reception Studies seminars and workshops at Newcastle. My research interests include pregnancy and motherhood in the ancient world, myth and fairy tale, magic, and Classical Reception, particularly in popular culture. To date, I have presented at several undergraduate conferences and been the recipient of several awards. I plan to undertake Honours and a PhD following the completion of my degree, during which time I intend to focus on how circus and carnival have been received and represented in popular culture (for example, their relationship with mistrust and xenophobia, anarchy, exoticism, magic, subversion, liminality, and social release) and tracing these perceptions back to the ancient world. My article, ‘Magic to Heal the ‘Wondering Womb’ in Antiquity’ is available on Folklore Thursday. I’ve also begun to present my research at conferences, including ‘Female Troubles: Ancient Ideas Persisting Through Time’ at the Australasian Council for Undergraduate Research Conference in 2019. erica.whye@uon.edu.au
@Rihver93