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 …

How to write a bad essay

Edmund Stewart considers some of the common pitfalls in essay writing in Classics and Archaeology Here at Nottingham, as at most universities, it is essay season. We await with great hope and some trepidation the arrival of our students’ dissertations. In preparing for this moment, both students and staff may wonder what it is that …

Latin Now: The Lancaster Cavalry Inscription

Alex Mullen considers bilingualism and violent interactions in the Lancaster Cavalry Inscription I have been thinking again recently about the north-western Roman horse rider reliefs, which are concentrated in the Rhineland and, to a lesser extent, Britain (now boasting over 20), and have a primarily military focus. My favourite is that of Insus, found in …

Russians as Spartans? – or Putin the tyrant?

Edmund Stewart on Boris Johnson’s latest allusions to the ancient world In a recent interview with the Times, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson once again looked to the ancient world in an effort to explain modern Russia and its relations with the West. “I was reading Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. It was obvious …

Hylas and the Nymphs are back

Edmund Stewart on why the recent removal of Hylas and the Nymphs was not merely clumsy but wrong As has been widely reported in both the national press and this blog, Waterhouse’s masterpiece Hylas and the Nymphs was recently removed from display at Manchester Art Gallery in an attempt to ‘challenge a Victorian fantasy’ of …

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 …

Enoch Powell and the Classics

Gary Fisher on Herodotus, Enoch Powell, and Metaphors of Arboreal Rebirth ‘In that acropolis [of Athens] is a shrine of Erechtheus, called the “Earthborn,” and in the shrine are an olive tree and a pool of salt water. The story among the Athenians is that they were set there by Poseidon and Athena as tokens when …

Why remember the fallen?

A Perspective from Ancient Greece Edmund Stewart reflects on Remembrance Sunday and on teaching ancient Greek military history. By a happy coincidence, the lectures for first-year undergraduates at Nottingham on the topic of the Greeks at war have fallen before and after Remembrance Sunday. Such a coincidence provides ample room for reflection on how different …