Rhetoric and reception

Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

We research the ways in which ancient individuals, groups and communities communicated ideas, view points and knowledge in order to persuade their contemporaries and succeeding generations, and how the ancient world has been communicated and understood in later historical periods.

We are particularly interested in communication across various media (public speech, literary texts, visual representations, coins and monumental inscriptions), which show the impact of persuasive strategies on the immediate and longer-term recipients, including the modern reception of the ancient world. Our reception specialists focus on projects which significantly develop our understanding of the ancient world through its later reception.

Researchers

  • Henriette van der Blom is a specialist in Roman oratory and rhetoric across the republican and imperial periods, and the founding director of the Network for Oratory and Politics.
  • Leslie Brubaker has a particular interest in the rhetorical relationship between text and image, and the ways in which gender is communicated in the Byzantine period.
  • Philip Burton works on the development of Christian Latin discourse and how modern novelists, poets, translators, and others have reinvented the ancient world.
  • Hannah Cornwell focuses on the communicative aspects of peace, diplomacy and negotiations in the Roman world.
  • Theodora Hadjimichael is an expert on the reception of Greek Lyric poetry in antiquity, focussing in particular in the complex processes which led to the development of a canon and on its philosophical reception.
  • Gideon Nisbet is an expert in ancient epigrams and in classical reception in nineteenth century literature, in modern translations and in popular culture.
  • Leire Olabarria works on the reception of ancient Egypt in some aspects of popular culture, such as heavy metal music and science fiction literature.
  • Diana Spencer is particularly interested in language and etymology as expressions of and influences on experience and memory.
  • Elena Theodorakopoulos works on poetic communication in the Roman republic and principate and the reception of classical culture and literature in modern film and literature.

Major publications

Projects