Next week on October 19th we welcome a special speaker to our regular research seminar series. Of course all our speakers are special, but Dr Sam Agbamu, who is currently at Royal Holloway, is about to join the staff of the Classics Department at Reading, in January 2023. We are hoping that lots of students and staff will come to the seminar and welcome him!
Sam did his PhD at King’s College London, researching modern Italy’s use of the history of Roman imperialism in Africa, during its own imperial endeavours on the continent in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Sam’s current research project, which he will pursue at Reading as part of his Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, is on the afterlives of the neo-Latin epic, the Africa, by the fourteenth century humanist Petrarch. This poem recounts the history of the Second Punic War, and Sam is studying its role in transmitting ancient ideas about the continent of Africa into the early modern and modern era. Sam’s other interests include anti-racist and anti-colonial approaches to the literatures and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, and their receptions. In spring term he will teach on our Part 2 module ‘Roman History: the rise and fall of the Republic’, and a new module on ‘“Race” in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds’. Students are encouraged to sign up for the new module if they would like to, as there are still places on it.
Petrarch by Justus of Ghent (public domain)