Tag Archives: classics and archaeology

Semester 1 2024 Reading Classics Research Seminars

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We are pleased to announce the launch of our Reading Classics Seminar Series for Semester 1 2024, which will boost our Wednesday afternoons with constructive and stimulating lectures and discussions on various aspects of Classics research!

In this series of lectures, starting on 30 October 2024, we welcome a diverse group of speakers in our Departmental seminars. Our Semester 1 seminar series will explore a variety of topics and periods of Classical studies. All seminars are hybrid and will be livestreamed on MS Teams. No registration is required. Attendance is free and open to all!

The first session of our series is part of a public talk series on Generative AI and Ancient World Studies over Semester 1. These talks, starting 9 October 2024, are organized as part of the iGAIAS project and the Distorted History: AI’s Skewed Visions of the Ancient World exhibition at the Ure Museum of Archaeology. Registration is required for these talks, and a link for the 16 October 2024 session is available below.

For more information, contact e.m.m.aston@reading.ac.uk.

Below you can find a poster with all titles:

Full list of titles

16 October – 16:00-17:30 (EM G44)

Prof. Genevieve Liveley, University of Bristol, The silence of the LLMs – Speaking silence with generative AI. [Registration Link]

30 October – 16:00-17:30 (EM G25)

Dr. Sally Grainger, independent scholar, Cooking with silphium: experiments with Ferula asafoetida and Ferula drudeana.

20 November – 16:00-17:30 (EM G25)

Dr. Mathura Umachandran, University of Exeter, Race, Empire, and Decoloniality Seminar.

4 December – 16:00-17:30 (EM G25)

Dr. Annelies Casimir, University of Southampton, Networking with gods: Greek religious sites and the rise of Rome.

13 December – 16:00-17:30 (EM G25)

Dr. Ari Bryen, Vanderbilt University, Law among the degraded: two stories from the Roman Empire.

Aphrodite’s first birthplace

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Prof. Smith on 'Aphrodite's Isle', Cranae, near Gythio.

Prof. Smith on ‘Aphrodite’s Isle’, Cranae, near Gythio.

On the summer solstice, Prof Amy Smith made her first visit to the island of Kythera, Aphrodite’s first ‘birthplace’ according to Hesiod. During this visit coincidentally Amy’s latest article, Aphrodite signified more than beauty, appeared in The Conversation. Amy’s visit to Kythera is part of the Summer Session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, which she is co-directing, as Gertrude Smith Professor, with Prof Amelia Brown (University of Queensland). Amelia and Amy took their students to Kythera en route to Crete and on the return yesterday visited another ‘Isle’ sacred to Aphrodite, Cranae, now home to a Greek naval lighthouse, where in antiquity Helen & Paris are rumoured to have sojourned en route to Egypt.

Profs. Brown and Smith are keen to enthuse their students with the subjects of their own research, which coincidentally intersect on Aphrodite, but also the depth and breadth of physical information — sites and artefacts as well as geography — that evidence the history and archaeology of Greece. This 6-week programme also provides students a chance to learn from the many other archaeologists, curators, conservators and other experts working on site over the summer months.

Profs Brown & Smith with ASCSA Summer Session 2024 students at Mochlos, with its excavator Dr Giorgos Doudalas (UNC Greensboro)

Profs Brown & Smith with ASCSA Summer Session 2024 students at Mochlos, with its excavator Dr Giorgos Doudalas (UNC Greensboro)

You may find some of Prof. Smith’s other work on Aphrodite here:

Summer Term 2024 Reading Classics Research Seminars

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We are pleased to announce the launch of our Reading Classics Seminar Series for Summer Term 2024, which will boost our Wednesday afternoons with constructive and stimulating lectures and discussions on various aspects of Classics research!

In this series of lectures, starting on 24 April, we welcome a diverse group of speakers in our Departmental seminars. Our Summer seminar series will explore a variety of topics and periods of Classical studies. All seminars will be livestreamed on MS Teams; tune in every Wednesday at 4pm (unless otherwise stated)! Attendance is free and open to all! To attend please follow this link: https://bit.ly/3UkPo10. Below you can find a poster with all titles.

Full list of titles

24 April

Shaohui Wang, Northeast Normal University, China, and University of Cambridge, ἰὼ, ἰή, ἰέ – a survey of ritual cries and emotions in ancient Greek religion and the parallels in Chinese religious practice

1 May

Chris Pellin, University of Oxford, I want to be Great too – but how? Alexander, Augustus, and Livy

8 May – Postponed

Mathura Umanchandran, Exeter University, Race, Empire, and Decoloniality Seminar

15 May

Jordan Miller, University of Cambridge, Under the Bed and among the Dead: Monsters in Ancient Egypt

29 May

Polly Low, Durham University, Nothing to see here? Inscriptions and the early Athenian Empire

 

All (unless otherwise labelled) starting at 16:00 in Edith Morley 126J

For more information contact e.m.m.aston@reading.ac.uk

Classics students visit Athens

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On Saturday 28th October we set off on our odyssey to Athens. After a good night’s sleep from a full day of travelling, we dove straight into the agenda for Day One, which consisted of walking around the Kerameikos site, as well as the Agora, along with their respective museums. After a very short excursion at the Epigraphic Museum, we finished off our first day wandering around the National Archaeological Museum, home to some unique artefacts.

To kick off Day Two we made our way over to the main attraction, the Akropolis, a jewel of Athenian architecture. Once we made it to the top, the view of Athens was absolutely incredible, so obviously many photos were taken. An aspect of Greek theatre came into perspective as we stopped off at the Theatre of Dionysus on the way down, one of the numerous sites on the slopes of the Akropolis. Then after some lunch and shopping, we were shown around the Akropolis Museum, before heading back to the BSA to be treated to a lecture of “Redressing Aphrodite on Lord Hamilton’s Meidias hydra” by our very own, Prof. Amy Smith.

On the morning of Day Three in the Greek capital we walked around the Panathenaic stadium and were even lucky enough to see a vast collection of all of the Olympic torches to date, which was a memorable experience. That afternoon we leapt forward in history and visited the Byzantine and Christian Museum, and it was absolutely fascinating to learn about the impact that Christianity had on the development of the ancient world. For example, the ideology of the gods was completely reshaped and many of the myths and stories lost their influence on people in the ancient world. It is now so interesting to see the various aspects of antiquity that still exist in modern religion today.

In the midst of the trip there was an optional hike up Mount Lycabettus on the morning of Day Four, to obtain, as with the Akropolis, an outstanding view of Athens. This was just an early morning walk for anyone who fancied it and was certainly a great way to start the day.

After that we explored Hadrian’s Library, the Roman Forum and the Tower of Winds in the morning and then in the afternoon, we visited the Numismatic and Cycladic Museums. Being able to view a grand variety of ancient coins was just incredible. The detail depicted on the coins was outstanding, from images that referenced famous battles, deities, animals, historical figures to myths and scenes from epic poems. Some favourites included coins bearing: the chariot of the goddess Nike being pulled by four horses and the reunion between Odysseus and his dog Argus from Homer’s Odyssey was another fan favourite.

Moving away from all of the coins, our final site in Athens was the Cycladic Museum, where we explored various pieces of art from the ancient world, with Dr Rebecca Levitan from Kings College London, who turned our focus on the marble Cycladic figurines. These miniature figures mostly resembled women and there were very few that depicted men, with the design being very minimalistic and only showing a few select features, such as the nose, arms and breasts.

For our final day we exited the Athenian bubble, making our way over to Nafplio, and stopping at Mycenae to see the tomb of Agamemnon on the way. Our final museum stop was the archaeological museum, home to some fascinating artefacts such as pots, masks, armour and weapons.

Aside from all of the historical sites and museums we also had a lot of free time to explore the Greek culture along with its exciting cuisine, and although we had a busy schedule, we even managed to squeeze in a visit to the beach.

A week in Greece to be remembered. Many thanks to all involved in the organisation of this amazing trip.

 

Written by Henry Tandy 

Black Classicists in America: From ostracism to scholarship

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To celebrate Black History month and as part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, UoR Classics Department is delighted to announce a new installation in the department hallway and resource room (EM40), on the ground floor of the Edith Morley Building at University of Reading. This exhibition celebrates the important role of black Americans in the field of Classics and provides a unique opportunity to reflect upon the purpose of higher education and its place in the struggle for equality and human enrichments.
 
The study of Greek and Latin was the curricular foundation of education for many centuries, both in the United States and abroad. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, people of African descent, hungry for the ‘bread of knowledge’ as Frederick Douglass put it, wanted to learn Greek and Latin. Many institutions responded to the need; Howard University played a key role and from its inceptions offered a range of classes that enabled black American students to study ancient languages.
 
The black American men and women featured in this installation taught Greek and Latin at the college or university level and made ground-breaking achievements in education. Their academic accomplishments bolstered a new tradition of black intellectualism and resulted in greater opportunities for future generations of black Americans.
This photographic installation was prepared by Marc Ives and the Classics Department, St Gabriel’s School, Newbury, based on a collection of material curated by Michele Valerie Ronnick, Distinguished Professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, USA. Its production costs were underwritten by the James Loeb Classical Library Foundation at Harvard University.
This special exhibition is on display 18 October–15 December 2023.

Two New Modules Consider the Ancient World beyond the Myth of Whiteness

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By now, many classicists have begun to recognise and to think about how the study of ancient Greece and Rome has contributed to promoting and upholding structures of white supremacy and other forms of racism. Part of the discipline of Classics’ role in supporting white supremacy has been in the elevation of ancient Greece and ancient Rome above other ancient societies, as something distinctly glorious and worthy of study. By lumping the diverse societies of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds together, a myth of a White, Western civilisation took shape, allowing those invested in such a myth to draw a straight line between, for example, fifth-century BCE Athens and the twentieth-century United States of America. Such narratives also serve to exclude societies constructed as non-White or non-European from the myth of civilisation. However, challenging such narratives remains controversial. A recent episode of ‘Horrible Histories’ was accused of reinventing history when it highlighted the fact that people with dark skin have been present in Britain since prehistory and that African soldiers in the Roman army were stationed in Britain. Such controversies serve to show that there remains an urgent need for a conversation on the assumed whiteness of the ancient world.

For several decades now, academics at the University of Reading’s Classics Department have been working to unpick this side of the discipline, thinking about how Classics has been used to promote ideologies of racism and colonialism, how those subject to racist and colonialist uses of the Classics have formulated their own responses to and resisted such uses, and how the legacies of ancient Greece and ancient Rome have been felt beyond the so-called West. Relatedly, Classicists at Reading have been turning to the idea of interconnected Global Antiquities, in order to decentre ancient Greece and Rome from perspectives on the ancient world. In 2023, two new undergraduate modules bring the research of staff in this area to the undergraduate syllabus, contributing an already diverse and boundary-pushing offering of modules.

In the Spring Term of 2023, Dr Sam Agbamu introduced a third-year module on ‘Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds’. Taking students from the earliest texts of the Greco-Roman literary canon right up to contemporary Classical Reception, the module focuses on how ideas of race and ethnicity took root in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and how such ideas continue to shape the worlds we live in today. One of the aims of the module is to challenge the biological reality of race, by showing just how changeable conceptions of race in the ancient world were. As well as looking at how race was thought about in antiquity, students also study how authors, artists, and scholars racialised as ‘non-white’ have encountered the constructed whiteness of classical antiquity. The module encourages students to draw on their own experiences and perceptions of race and ethnicity in order to formulate personal responses to the texts and material studied. Part of this involves creative elements of coursework, in which students can respond to module material in a medium of their choosing, whether that be a piece of visual art, creative writing, or a film. The module is running again in the 2023/2024 academic year, and will be updated to take into account the rapidly developing scholarship in the field, as well as the changing global context in which the module situates itself.

In Spring 2024 Professor Rachel Mairs will be teaching a new second-year module on Ancient Ethiopia: The Aksumite Kingdom.  This module looks at the city of Aksum, in modern Ethiopia, and its empire in the third and fourth centuries CE.  Spectacular monuments remain at Aksum today: tall stelae used to mark the graves of kings, stone inscriptions, the ruins of palaces.  All of these speak to the Aksumite kingdom’s sense of its own power and place in the world.  Aksum is mentioned in a small number of ancient Greek and Roman historical sources, but this module takes a different angle by focussing on Aksumite accounts of their own history: whether inscriptions from the period of the empire itself, or later Ethiopian and Eritrean written and oral histories which give the memory of Aksum a special place in local identities in the northern Horn of Africa.

 

Written by Sam Agbamu and Rachel Mairs

Prof. Eleanor Dickey speaks to pupils at Garth Hill College

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We were thrilled to see the opening session of this years’ Garth Hill College Military History Society being led by University of Reading’s Professor Eleanor Dickey. 

The session was designed specifically for the society, and saw pupils learning how people living in Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s wall, wrote letters to each other. Pupils were able to use replica tools to write out their own letter, which they could then take home.

It was great to hear how much the students enjoyed the session, and we thank Garth Hill College and of course Professor Dickey for hosting.

You can read the full bulletin from Garth Hill College here.

 

Classics and Italian Colonialism: A Three-Day Conference at the Museo delle Civiltà, Rome (22-24 June 2023)

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Written by Samuel Agbamu

Rome is a city steeped in the history of empire. Few tourists will fail to visit any number of the imposing remains of the Rome of the Caesars, be it the Colosseum, Pantheon, or the Forum. Yet the imperial history of Rome did not end with the putative fall of the Western Roman Empire, whenever we might date that, nor with Charles V’s sack of Rome in 1527, nor even with the incorporation of Rome into the Kingdom of Italy in 1870. Of the major European imperial powers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Italy stands out as perhaps the least discussed, either inside or outside Italy, and one of the least understood. Because of its easy association with the Fascist regime, which held power from 1922 to 1943, and the invasion of Ethiopia launched by Mussolini in 1935, the legacy of modern Italian imperialism is frequently subsumed into the question of Fascism. Yet Italy pursued an imperial agenda almost at the same time as being unified as a nation in the 1860s, and the legacies of its colonial endeavours persisted long after the death of Mussolini, and continue to be felt in many ways today. Furthermore, Fascism is well known for adopting, adapting, and inventing ideas drawn from ancient Rome, from the so-called ‘Roman salute’ to the symbol of the Fasces itself. Yet modern Italian imperialism, prior to Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, had a long history of posing itself as ancient Rome’s successor, returning to regions that had once been part of the Roman empire.

It was with such considerations in mind that Elena Giusti (University of Warwick) and I organised a three-day conference in Rome in June 2023. When we began to put the event together, we did not know that we would be having these discussions in a country run by Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party. Fratelli d’Italia are the heir to Mussolini’s Fascist party, and were swept into power partly on the basis of virulent anti-migration policies. Many of the migrants who are targeted by Meloni’s xenophobic rhetoric and policies depart for Italy from the coast of North Africa, especially Libya, a former colony of Italy. Similarly, many of the migrants originate from Italy’s former east African colonies. Italy’s right-wing, anti-immigration governments have been especially vociferous in their hostility towards those crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe’s southern shores, despite the fact that Italian imperial ideology once promoted the notion that the North African coastline was Italy’s ‘Fourth Shore’, and that Libya was, in fact, a part of Italy. Such ongoing ramifications of Italy’s past imperial claims, many of which were based on selective readings of North African ancient history, made the urgency of this conference acutely felt.

Rome’s EUR district was built for the Esposizione Universale Roma 1942, which never took place due to the outbreak of the Second World War. At the end of the road is the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana or the so-called ‘Square Colosseum’. Photo by author.

The conference was hosted at the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome, in collaboration with Rosa Anna di Lella and Gaia Delpino, cultural anthropologists working at the museum. Set within the imposing EUR district of Rome, the ultimate architectonic expression of Fascism’s self-representation, the museum holds the collections of the former Museo Coloniale, inaugurated by Mussolini in 1923. Recently, the museum has been working to contextualise and expose the hidden histories of its collections, culminating with the current exhibition, Museo delle Opacità. In this context, to host the conference in the heart of an area built in Fascism’s image, but in an institution working hard to address the legacies of colonialism and Fascism from within, offered a particular poignancy to the event’s proceedings.

Over the three days of the conference, we heard from not only classicists, ancient historians, archaeologists, but also scholars of Italian history and literature, as well as North African and East African history. Papers addressed such themes as Italian archaeologists’ promotion of colonialism in the Aegean and North Africa, the legacies of intellectuals who had used ancient history to support or resist imperial ideologies, ancient history in the Fascist Italian classroom, and new methodological and theoretical perspectives on Italian imperial history. The final day involved workshops organised by the museum on their colonial collections, while the conference was closed by Angelica Pesarini with a keynote on teaching Italian colonialism in the university classroom.

The conference confirmed that the relationship between Classics and colonialism in Italian contexts remains an important and still underdeveloped field of research. This remains the case despite a recent profusion of publications, including forthcoming monographs from Sergio Brillante and myself.  There especially remains much work to be done on this topic from an avowedly anti-/decolonial perspective . Elena Giusti and I plan to publish an edited volume with De Gruyter including contributions from the conference.

More information about the conference, including the full programme and paper abstracts can be found here.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Institute of Classical Studies, the Past and Present Society, the University of Warwick Connecting Cultures funding scheme, and the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome.

Developments in Ancient Language Pedagogy

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The following blog has been written by Jackie Baines, who organised a workshop on ‘Developments in Ancient Language Pedagogy’ held in the Department on Friday 19th May 2023. We would like to thank Jackie and all those involved for running such a successful event!

Steven Hunt – Edward Ross – Maiken Mosleth King – James Robson – Jackie Baines

On the 19th May I ran an international blended workshop on the topic of advances in ancient language pedagogy. The workshop came about as part of my research leave which, as a teaching intensive lecturer, has given me the opportunity to look at ways in which I might refresh my pedagogical ideas and practices. I am indebted to Edward Ross who assisted me with many aspects of the organisation of this event. The rationale for the workshop and the choice of talks and speakers came about as a result of experiences and observations over a number of years teaching Latin here at the University of Reading, which include the following:

Choice of Textbooks

For many years we used Jones and Sidwell Reading Latin as the main textbook with all its quirks and difficulties for complete beginners.  After looking at the suitability of many possible alternatives we subsequently moved to using Taylor’s Latin to GCSE which is very much more approachable in its presentation of grammar and its layout for 21st century students but has many drawbacks for moving on with speed and full understanding, to higher levels of Latin. 

Teaching Spoken Latin

This academic year (2022 – 2023) I am grateful to my colleague Professor Eleanor Dickey who organised weekly sessions of spoken Latin for colleagues, run by teachers from Oxford Latinitas. It was a revelation in a number of ways, principally, that there are definite advantages to learning to use a language, now considered ‘dead’ by many, as languages are normally used – that is to speak.  Latin was indeed taught orally until relatively recently, so why aren’t we doing more of it?  A subsidiary lesson for me was being returned to the position of student, at times most alarming and stressful when using a language I know well, but in a totally unfamiliar way.  I have set up a student focus group using Ørberg’s Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. I am impressed by the speed of vocabulary acquisition and grammatical understanding gained by reading and speaking using only (mostly!) Latin.

Online learning in the post-pandemic world

The pandemic has made us realise the possibilities of online tools for additional learning support.  The rise of AI, in particular Chat GPT is opening up a myriad of opportunities and unnerving problems, both for teachers and for the students themselves who need to have enough understanding to use such tools appropriately. Edward A.S. Ross has recently published an article discussing this further here. Edward and I are delighted to be able to announce that since the workshop we have been awarded Teaching and Learning Enhancement Projects funding by the University of Reading to investigate and trial ChatGPT as a conversational language study tool by codifying and standardising methods for using conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) models in ancient language classes.

Workshop talks

In the workshop we were treated to six stimulating and thought-provoking talks, listed below with abstracts available here. Speakers reflected on past practices and perceptions of ancient languages and how they have been taught along with learning how the emergence of new technologies and their use can be used to enhance our teaching. Thanks to all speakers for their contributions.

Emergent pedagogies in classical languages teaching in UK schools: Steven Hunt (University of Cambridge)

Capturing the Classroom: A Snapshot of Approaches to Latin Teaching in UK Universities: Mair E. Lloyd (Open University and University of Cambridge); James Robson (Open University)

Using Simple Grammar Videos to Flip the Classroom: Antonia Ruppel (Institute of Indology and Tibetology, LMU Munich)

Digital software as a pedagogical aid in teaching ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs: Maiken Mosleth King (University of Bristol)

A New Frontier: AI and Ancient Language Pedagogy: Edward A. S. Ross (University of Reading)

Living Latin in the Classroom: benefits and challenges of communicative approaches: Mair E. Lloyd (Open University and University of Cambridge)

 

Written by Jackie Baines

Postgraduate Colloquium 2023

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On the 25th and 26th of May 2023, the Department of Classics at the University of Reading held its annual postgraduate colloquium. The colloquium is a chance for Masters and PhD students to share an aspect of their research with colleagues from the department in the form of a brief presentation. Students were able to present their research in a friendly and positive environment, with space for respectful and informative discussion. This year saw a fantastic mix of thought-provoking topics being presented from all corners of the classical world, triggering lots of interesting questions from the audience.

After the two day event, some of the students and staff from the department visited Park House for a well-earned celebratory drink. Here they are enjoying the sunshine!

Thank you to all of our staff and students from the department who took part in the colloquium, both those presenting and those sitting in the audience. We hope for an equally successful colloquium in 2024!