News & Tweets
The ACRSN is always keen to hear about events or activities (e.g. performances, book launches, exhibitions) that may be of interest to other scholars in the field of classical reception studies. Please e-mail (info@acrsn.org), tweet (@ACRSN_org), or skeet (@ACRSN.bsky.social) details to the ACRSN web co-ordinators. An archive of past news and events is available here.
July 2025: PhD opportunity - race, translation, and ancient Greek tragedy (UQ)
Proposals are invited for PhD projects on the topic of race, translation, and ancient Greek tragedy. We particularly welcome projects that engage with tragedy, translation and adaptation, and Indigeneity. Such projects could investigate strategies for translating and adapting tragedy into an Indigenous context, including exploring productions such as Wesley Enoch’s Black Medea, Queensland Theatre’s 2022 Othello (adapted to the context of the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion), or Kylie Bracknell’s translation of Macbeth, as Hecate, into the Indigenous Noongar language for Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company.
There is also scope for the PhD to be a creative writing practice-as-research project, and we particularly welcome First Nations applicants interested in authoring a creative translation/adaptation of a chosen tragedy for this pathway.
Dr Emma Cole, expert in Greek tragedy and its reception, is the primary supervisor for this PhD project, and Associate Professor Rob Pensalfini, expert in Indigenous languages and the Artistic Director of Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble, is associate supervisor.
Applicants should have a first-class honours degree (or equivalent) or a master’s degree awarded with distinction (or equivalent). Their academic and/or artistic achievements to date should show a good strategic fit to the project brief.
This PhD project aligns with a recently awarded Australian Government grant is only available to domestic students (Australian citizens). Applications must be received by 31 March 2026 but are encouraged earlier.
For more information, please contact Dr Emma Cole: e.cole@uq.edu.au.
April 2022: call for papers: Reception, Susception, Acception: The Use and Re-use of Classical Studies to be held at Australian National University, Canberra on December 1-2, 2022. Confirmed speakers: Alastair Blanshard (UQ), Marguerite Johnson (Newcastle), Simon Perris (VUW), Tracey Walters (Stony Brook University). Call: https://slll.cass.anu.edu.au/events/reception-susception-acception-use-and-re-use-classical-studies-0. Deadline for abstracts: September 2, 2022. Further information: email Dr Chris Bishop (ANU) - christopher.bishop@anu.edu.au.
March 2021: call for papers/expressions of interest: Classics in Colonial Cities: a Virtual Conference. The program Classical Heritage and the Story of Sydney at the University of Sydney plans an online conference in November 2021, organised by Prof. Alastair Blanshard (Queensland), Prof. Barbara Caine (Sydney) and Prof. Julia Horne (Sydney). Call: https://sophi-events.sydney.edu.au/calendar/classics-in-colonial-cities-2021/. Deadline June 1, 2021.
December 2020: new publication - The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century (Brill, 2020: https://brill.com/view/title/58949) - co-edited by ACRSN founding member Alastair Blanshard (Paul Eliadis Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland) and Emma Stafford (Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Leeds), with chapters by Arlene Allan (Otago), Eran Almagor, Jean Alvares (Montclair State), Alix Beaumont (York), Monica S. Cyrino (New Mexico), Will Desmond (Maynooth), Matthew Dillon (New England), Frances Foster (Cambridge), T. H. M. Gellar-Goad (Wake Forest), Joel Gordon (Otago), Stephe Harrop (Liverpool Hope), Owen Hodkinson (Leeds), Katherine Lu Hsu (Holy Cross), Paula James (Open University), Hugo Koning (Leiden), Kleoniki Kyrkopoulou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Lisa Maurice (Bar-Ilan), Andreas N. Michalopoulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Charilaos N. Michalopoulos (Democritus University of Thrace), Eleanor OKell (Leeds), Ayelet Peer (Bar-Ilan), Patricia Salzman-Mitchell (Montclair State), Clemence Schultze, María Seijo-Richart, Jon Solomon (Illinois), Emma Stafford (Leeds), Sam Summers (Middlesex), Rachael White, Michael Williams (Southampton), and Maria G. Xanthou (Bristol).
May 2020: a number of blog posts have appeared as part of the Australasian 'take over' of the UK Classical Reception Studies Network (CRSN) blog, coordinated by Prof. Marguerite Johnson from the University of Newcastle, NSW (noted in our November news, below).
February 2020: read a review of Marguerite Johnson's edited book Antipodean Antiquities. Classical Reception Down Under (Bloomsbury, 2019) by Victoria Jennings in Classical Review 70.1 (2020): 261-263.
November 2019: Prof. Marguerite Johnson [marguerite.johnson@newcastle.edu.au] from The University of Newcastle, NSW is coordinating an Australasian 'take over' of the CRSN blog (https://classicalreception.org/blog/) for a little while. She would like to hear from colleagues, postgrads and undergrads and those active in Classical Reception Studies with an Australasian twist to contact her with a view to contributing a blog to the ‘take over.’ The idea is to show the CR activity going on in our neck of the woods. Contributors may signal activities, current research and publications, career progression, ideological struggles, potential difficulties in, say, 'getting work out there,' institutional support, etc... Ideas could also include a collective postgrad blog outlining research activities at a particular university, or new courses on CR.
October 2019: two new books of interest for Australasian classical reception studies:
- Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Reception Down Under - edited by Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, NSW), Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception, 2019: "Leading and emerging, early career scholars in Classical Reception Studies come together in this volume to explore the under-represented area of the Australasian Classical Tradition. They interrogate the interactions between Mediterranean Antiquity and the antipodean worlds of New Zealand and Australia through the lenses of literature, film, theatre and fine art."
- Classical Allusions - poems by John Davidson (Victoria University Wellington), Steele Roberts, 2019: "John Davidson retells myths and historical events (sometimes to highlight a modern concern or controversy), reinvents mythical or historical individuals, and now and then enjoys shameless forays into fantasy."
|
