Khameleon Classics

Is Classics outreach working? Does it meet the concerns of students once they’re at university? Shivaike Shah speaks with Andi Marsh, recent University of Oxford graduate, about her experiences studying Classics as a state-educated Black woman. They discuss how Andi founded the Christian Cole Society to build a community of Classics students of colour and amplify the voices and histories of BIPOC people from the ancient world, as well as within academia; how crucial curriculum reform is for outreach; and how she found working with (and sometimes against) the Oxford Classics Faculty to decolonise Oxford Classics.

Heavily involved in access and outreach initiatives as an undergraduate, Andi now works in widening the participation of disproportionately underrepresented students in top UK universities.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/medeas-performance-history

When Haiti declared its independence from France on 1 January 1804, it began the process of fostering a national culture. One element of this cultural development can be seen at the intersection of Haitian literature with the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome. In this episode, Shivaike Shah talks with Tom Hawkins, Associate Professor of Classics at Ohio State University, about the ways in which Haitian authors have sought ‘to take back Classics from the colonial archive’ (Emily Greenwood) in texts ranging from the earliest years of the new nation to the contemporary Haitian diaspora.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/classics-in-haiti

Shivaike Shah talks to Professor Fiona Macintosh from the University of Oxford, director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, an online research project that has digitised and made accessible thousands of sources relating to classical drama and performance. Shivaike and Fiona talk about the APGRD’s work, and in particular, the interactive e-book Medea: A Performance History, which was published in 2016. They then discuss how our understanding of Medea has changed over time, and in particular, how specific translations and performances of the play have been used time and again to illustrate contemporary political debates.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/medeas-performance-history

In both Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, classical literature and history were appropriated to provide a mythic origin and justification for fascist politics. In this episode, Shivaike talks to Helen Roche, Associate Professor of Modern European Cultural History at Durham University, about the relationship between Classics, Fascism, and colonialism. Helen discusses her research, which explores the way that ancient Greek education was co-opted by Nazi Germany. Looking back to the eighteenth century and forward to modern Europe, Helen and Shivaike explore why notions of classical superiority and desirability have held such sway in right-wing states.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/classics-in-nazi-germany

The Greeks – and the Athenians in particular – were lionised by the Victorians for their art, their culture, and their military prowess. But the ancient Greeks also worried the Victorians because they seemed to permit sexual relationships between males. In this podcast, Shivaike Shah and his guest, Professor Daniel Orrells from the Department of Classics at King’s College London, explore the nineteenth-century debates about ‘Greek love’. Shivaike and Daniel talk about how Victorian men who were attracted to other males turned back to the ancient Greeks, and ask what we ought to make today of this example of Victorian philhellenism.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/victorian-philhellenism-greek-love

Wole Soyinka in Nigeria, Toni Morrison in the United States, Derek Walcott in the Caribbean, and Bernardine Evaristo in the UK are just a few of the contemporary Black writers who have engaged with Graeco-Roman antiquity in their writing. In this podcast, Shivaike Shah speaks to Justine McConnell, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at King’s College London, about why ancient Greece and Rome hold such a prominent place in 20th- and 21st-century literature by African and African diaspora writers. How do we explore the classical influence on works such as Toni Morrison’s Sula and Bernadine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe without overemphasising it?

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/classics-in-african-diasporic-writing

A Google search for ‘diversity and Classics’ reveals the field’s growing dedication to diversity in recent years, particularly in North America and the United Kingdom. But what do we mean when we say ‘diversity’, and—more importantly—to what end do we seek greater diversity in Classics? Shivaike Shah speaks with Arum Park, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Arizona, to explore these questions and to discuss steps that have been and can still be taken to diversify Classics.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/why-diversify-classics

In this episode Shivaike talks to Professor Barbara Goff, from the University of Reading, about the many roles of classical education in colonial West Africa. The teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek (and Hebrew) to West African boys was first undertaken by European missionaries as a way to prepare Africans to staff their Christian churches. But it then became a hallmark of professional status, and classically educated early nationalists, who vigorously opposed the British colonial occupation, could use the colonisers’ tools of Latin and Greek against them. African success with and fluency in classical languages then became a problem for the British, who started to condemn the whole idea of the ‘educated African’. Antiquity became one more counter in a long-drawn-out game of power and resistance between colonisers and colonised.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/classics-and-colonialism-in-west-africa

The question of the foreigner is one that permeates ancient Greek literature just as it plagues us today – in terms of global politics and economics (what shall we do about immigration?) and also as questions of identity (who are we and do we still belong here?). Shivaike Shah speaks with Carol Dougherty, Professor of Classical Studies at Wellesley College, about foreignness in classical texts. Works like Homer’s Odyssey and Aeschylus’s Suppliants reveal ancient Greek cultures that were just as complicated, self-questioning, diverse and unsure about themselves as we are today. Both texts are the product of momentous overseas encounters and precipitous cultural change, whether that be the archaic colonization movement in the 8th-6th centuries BCE or the development of the Athenian naval empire in the 5th century BCE. And yet these texts also provide their audiences – and us – with a mechanism for engaging with difference, for making ourselves at home once again in a new world.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/question-of-the-foreigner

It cannot be said enough that the Greeks and Romans did not view race the way we do today. Most notably, they did not use skin colour as a basis for dividing people into racial categories. In this podcast, Shivaike talks to Denise McCoskey, Associate Professor of Classics and Black World Studies at Miami University, about what race meant in the ancient world. How - and why - was race used as a concept in Greek and Roman times? And how do discussions about the Greeks and Romans help us to interrogate our own modern understanding of race?

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/race-in-antiquity