Incest and Incense: A study session at the Nottingham Contemporary

Thea Lawrence on ancient perfume and the myth of Myrrha at Nottingham Contemporary Art Gallery In conjunction with their most recent exhibition, The House of Fame, the Nottingham Contemporary is running a series of (free!) study sessions, grouped under the alluring title of A Darkened Room: On Feminism, Rituals, Death and the Occult. For the …

Removing Waterhouse: perfect for the Hylas myth

Helen Lovatt reflects on Hylas and the Nymphs A famous Pre-Raphaelite painting by Waterhouse of Hylas and the Nymphs has been removed from its gallery (a gallery entitled In Pursuit of Beauty) by Manchester Art Gallery. According to a recent article in the Guardian the gallery sees ‘the removal itself [as] an artistic act’, designed to …

Languages, Texts and Society: A New PG Journal

Melanie Fitton-Hayward announces a new post-graduate journal based at the University of Nottingham After publishing its first issue in April 2017, LTS editors are busy preparing for the second issue. There’s submissions to sort through, final articles to be edited, book reviews to be collated, peer reviewers to find, and style templates to be applied. …

Conference: Building Cohesion and Unity

Angeliki Roumpou announces a conference on combining approaches to the study of the past 2nd December A03 Humanities Building, The University of Nottingham, full details and registration available here The Department of Classics and the Department of Archaeology within the School of Humanities at the University of Nottingham have recently merged. The research students of …

My experiences of the British School at Rome’s Summer School

Undergraduate in Ancient History Ben White writes about his experiences as part of the British School at Rome’s summer school.

“If … you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”

Oliver Thomas discusses Theresa May’s recent speech about citizenship and being a “citizen of the world”. What would Diogenes have made of it all?

Chorus girls – and boys

Lynn Fotheringham tells us about the creative challenges and opportunities of the Chorus. In the Horrible Histories Groovy Greeks[1] theatre-show, a family of supposedly late-arriving theatre-goers are sucked into the action to learn about ancient Greek culture. They are informed that the Greeks had democracy, the Olympics and theatre: that the actors (all male) wore masks, …

The Ancient World is Awesome

Helen Lovatt explores Classical reception and childhood creativity in the Lego Movie. This post contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen the Lego movie, watch it immediately! The Lego Movie (2014) sets creativity in competition with conformity. You can watch the ‘Everything is Awesome’ sequence on Youtube, and it gives a good flavour of the central themes …

Greek Tragedy on the Small Screen

Lynn Fotheringham previews a series of rarely-seen TV productions of Greek tragedy, which she has organised to be shown in Nottingham next spring. In January-March 2016, CADRE and Lakeside Arts are bringing the BFI mini-season ‘Classics on TV: Greek Tragedy on the Small Screen’ to Nottingham. These rare productions range in date from 1958 to the last production specially …

Comics about Sparta

Lynn Fotheringham talks about how she got interested in Sparta’s depiction in comics – the subject of an event at Lakeside Museum this Saturday.     One Tuesday evening in spring 1998, a friend of mine showed up at the pub with the first issue of a comic telling the story of Thermopylae. If it had been in …