Issue 23 Welcome to the annual newsletter of the Department of Classics at Royal Holloway, University of London
Classics
Autumn 2013
Quid Novi? Welcome from Head of Department It’s perhaps strange that a newsletter from the Department of Classics should be called Quid Novi?, that we should speak of ‘news’ when our materials are so old. Has anything changed in classical antiquity in the last couple of millennia (to choose some nice round numbers…)? In fact, I would submit that the answer, in the deepest sense, is a roaring ‘yes!’ Let me first note, very briefly, that the world around us is changing. Economic and political climates are different. Tuition fees have risen very sharply. It may be difficult to put a price on Knowledge (with a capital letter), but we are now investing (a financial metaphor) a good deal of thought in adapting almost every practical aspect of our departmental life to ensure the best possible experience and the best preparation for our students in their future careers. But let me move on to the substance of our scholarly discipline – classical antiquity. The ancient world may be ‘ancient’, but new materials, artefacts, archaeological sites and texts are constantly being unearthed, discovered, linked… And, perhaps even more importantly, the very way in which we look at our world, and thus also at our pasts, is changing. Our understanding of gender, for example, is today radically different from what it was only a few decades ago. When the first woman was appointed in the 1960s to an official Fellowship in one of the Oxford colleges, the porters, not knowing what to say, addressed her as ‘Sir’… She was quick to set them right; they have not looked back since, and neither have we! Our
readings of Greek tragedy, Roman oratory, history, lyric poetry, philosophy and everything else have changed irrevocably in the process. Likewise, only a few decades ago Classics was regarded as deeply Eurocentric discipline, indeed one that excluded and marginalized other traditions and cultures, colours and political aspirations in the former colonies and elsewhere. Then, together with many other strands of change around the world, we in Classics realized that change was necessary, productive, smart, and indeed pleasurable and rewarding. Along came many new books, for example one, controversial, but influential and invigorating, called Black Athena; we began to study the wider political, cultural and social resonance of our materials and disciplines; we have changed and continue to change and to grow, all the while keeping an eye, of course, on our sources and on our points of departure. Some of these moves are better known under the heading of ‘Reception of the Classics’. But in truth, ‘reception’ is everywhere and it is everything. It means, not simply looking at the later histories of ancient history, philosophy, literature, art and archaeology. It is, more fundamentally,
an acknowledgement (under the philosophical heading of ‘phenomenology’ and ‘hermeneutics’) that whatever the ancient world means, it means things to readers, audiences, viewers and interpreters today, readers and viewers like us; it means that we, as interpreters, inevitably read some of our own current values into our pasts. We can’t forget who we are, and, indeed, why should we!? If this is true, then we can, paradoxically, but productively and with ease, speak of ‘the influence of the present on the past’; and if that’s true then we do indeed have a lot of new things in store for us in the study of antiquity. Quid Novi, then? Lots of stuff... Just watch this space!