Research Centres

Centre for Classical Reception

The Exeter Centre for Classical Reception was established in the summer of 2019 to acknowledge and build on the extraordinary expertise in the field of classical reception across various Humanities disciplines at Exeter. The Centre, under the joint directorship of Professor Rebecca Langlands (Classics) and Professor Henry Power (English), draws together over twenty scholars from the departments of Classics, English, Modern Languages, Art History and Visual Culture, Politics and History.

The Centre aims to generate and support research which acknowledges that Classics is a global discipline and which promotes awareness of the diversity of the discipline - both in the range of approaches it enables and in its openness to ‘receptions’ of antiquity from all cultures and all backgrounds.

Poster advertising panorama of Rome to be shown at the ‘Romafesta' at the Surrey Zoological Gardens in 1841 (Courtesy of The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum).

In this section

Centre staff

Our research involves staff and postgraduate students within the department, as well as academic staff from other institutions. More information about the research specialisms, publications and projects of our staff can be found within their individual profile pages.

About our research

We are committed to supporting research which is public facing and engaged with contemporary issues. The study of classical reception requires conversations about pressing social and political concerns—conversations that can raise the profile of Classics both within and outside the academy, but which are also important in themselves. In the Exeter Centre for Classical Reception we believe that the field of Classical Reception has the potential not only to transform Classics into a more inclusive discipline, but also to be a beneficial political instrument with broader reach. One of the founding aims of the new centre is to make a positive difference; existing projects associated with the centre already pursue such aims in relation to gender, sexuality, contemporary politics, policy on land use, and conflict resolution.

At the University of Exeter we are also fortunate to have access to some important classical reception resources, including The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum and the archives of Ted Hughes, Leonard Baskin and William Golding in our Special Collections.

Current clusters of expertise include:

  • Women writers & classical reception
  • Reception by French women in 15th-17th
  • Translation of Classical texts
  • Classical reception in the South West region
  • Reception of exempla and moral stories
  • Reception of Homeric poetry
  • Reception of Classics in the modern novel
  • Reception of classical art in the 18th-20th centuries
  • Decolonisation and classical reception

Social media

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Relevant modules

Many modules taught at the University are relevant to our research, and taught by Centre staff members.

Modules

CLA3275

Women Writing Classics

(Dr Emily Hauser)

 In this module we will study female writers’ receptions of the Classics and the issues which the study of (western) classicism introduces in terms of gender, identity, and canonicity. We will read some of the central modern receptions of the classical world by women writers, like Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls and Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles. By the end of the class, you will be able to discuss the influence of ‘the Classics’ in the context of feminist and reception studies, and to articulate the complex ways in which women writers engage with the classical past.

CLAM078

Classical Reception: An Introduction

(Professor Rebecca Langlands and Professor Katharine Earnshaw)

 Classical Reception Studies starts from the assumption that the past has meaning only in so far as it is “framed” – represented and discussed - in terms of the concerns of the present. Our modern understanding of the classical past has been shaped by centuries of appropriation and reinterpretation, loss and rediscovery. In turn, modern Western concepts such as “culture”, “civilisation” and concerns about, for example, national identity, political ideology, race and sexuality have been constituted and reconstituted with constant reference to ideas about and images of the Classical past. This module will examine different “framings” of many different aspects of the ancient world in post-classical cultures. You will explore both how these cultures have made use of the classical past and how they themselves have changed and shaped the way that the ancient world is understood both in academia and in popular culture.