Scenes from the Life of the Department

Welcome to our live blog where we'll regularly share something of the goings on in the department.

Autumn 2024

Week One (again)

Prof. Richard Alston

"Academic life has a reassuring seasonable rhythm. Some time at the end of July, the campus quietens leaving just a residual population of academics and postgrads. Across our leafy campus, there is a summer breath. In the further corners, one sometimes finds a grazing deer. Then, after what seems only a moment since the students were graduating in the hot summer days, it is late September: the buzz is back.

It is an audible change. The cars come down the hill in search of parking. Students call out to each other along the campus paths. The cafes are noisy. People greet each other in the corridors. Doors bangas people scurry along to ‘sort things out’. This year especially the transition seems to have been sudden. The rains have come. The winds are blowing. Autumn is here.

The students are back. It is the natural state of campus to be filled with people.

And so, we gather again. The year 2 and 3 students meet their personal tutors. We talk about how they have been through the summer. What are they looking forward to? We start the talks about life after the degree, almost always causing a brow to furrow as people think about what they need for the career ambitions. But mostly, it is chitter-chatter through which our relationships are renewed and catching up is caught up.

For the first-years, it is different. They are all lost to some degree. I have had first week of the year thirty plus times now. It is always a little daunting. But I remember how much more daunting it was when I first arrived at University. I knew nobody. I had no idea what I was doing or where I should go or how I should go there. I was a lost soul.

The key purpose of week one is to meet the lost souls and to reassure them that they are no more lost than anyone else and that one day soon they will be found. All the confusing details we talk them through will make sense. They are not alone and will be helped through the transition to university.

Somehow, it becomes so much better when I point that the person sitting next to them is equally lost, and why not just turn round and say hello to the person behind you? They might become a life-long friend; they might not. But they will be a familiar face in the next week, the next month and over the next three years. The best thing of all is in the first-year meetings, when I am about to talk through the Roman history for year 1, there is noise. Everyone had turned round and talked and made that contact. And then, I get them to quieten and think about what it is to study Roman history today.

In this generalised sense of not knowing, there is the start of a community and a journey. By the end of the week, timetables have appeared, as if by magic. There is schedule and order (mostly). From knowing no one, the community starts to form in the casual conversations and the cups of coffee and the gatherings in lectures and the discussions in seminars and even the waiting in corridors for the rooms to be available. Some things are, indeed, difficult: to be worthwhile, learning can never just be easy. But with those next to you and with your lecturers, you can work it. Those others are no longer strangers, but companions in the university journey, and slowly but surely, friends.

The world is so open for these brilliant wonderful, lively, engaged, vivacious people. Who will they become?

First week of the year: best week of the year."

Summer 2024

Why the Location of the Parthenon Marbles Matters: Reflections on Classics, Culture and Colonialism

Prof. Richard Alston

Cabinet ministers rarely comment on museum policies. Still rarer do Classical artefacts become front-line news in the cultural wars. But the Parthenon Marbles are an exception. The recent visit of the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, became a full-scale diplomatic spat when Mitsotakis restated, in answer to a direct question, the long-held Greek policy that the Marbles be returned to Athens. Rishi Sunak cancelled meetings, issued press releases, and despatched his culture warriors to go out and brief the press. My informants at the Greek embassy tell me that Mitsotakis, who learnt of his cancellation from X, was initially annoyed, then delighted. He was in London for a relatively low-key celebration of the life of Lord Byron, the Romantic poet and fighter for Greek freedom. But now his visit was headline news in Britain and Greece. The Prime Minister could be seen as standing up for Greek culture and heritage. The Parthenon Marbles were being debated and discussed and this coverage was the only way he could advance his country’s case. Whether this played well for Mr Sunak is not so obvious.

Royal Holloway Classics had already booked Professor Angelos Chaniotis of Princeton University to deliver the Dabis lecture, our annual summer public lecture. Angelos has a claim to be the most eminent living historian of the ancient Greek world. He advises a host of cultural institutions on their cultural policies including the New York Metropolitan Museum. There is no-one who is in a better position to provide an insight into the debates on the Marbles. I was honoured to respond to his lecture.

Angelos took us through the cultural and legal arguments. The marbles have been in the UK for 212 years and were on the Parthenon in Athens for nearly 2,300 years before being removed by Lord Elgin. In the UK, the marbles are often called ‘The Elgin Marbles’, which is bit like associating the Mona Lisa with Francis I of France rather than Leonardo da Vinci. Angelos demolished the legal arguments that Elgin had legal rights over the marbles. Those argument were regarded as spurious by many in the late eighteenth century. Even since the lecture, those legal arguments have been further questioned by the absence from the extensive Ottoman archives of any record of Elgin’s permission to remove the marbles. And, as a note, the Ottoman bureaucracy was extensive and their archives are extraordinary in their completeness: such a legal document should be there. Angelos showed how the separation and removal of the marbles is contrary to UN cultural heritage agreements, which establish ground rules for museums and the restoration of looted artefacts. He argued for a reconnection of the marbles, which are architectural features, with the Parthenon on art historical grounds and in restitution of a historical wrong.

My contribution was to situate the debate within the legacies of colonialism, not just Ottoman domination of Greece, but also of the subsequent Western European attitudes towards Greece. After the Greek War of Independence in the first half of 19^th century, the Great Powers installed a Bavarian government. They justified this by arguing that the Greeks were unfit to rule themselves. One consequence was to see the Greeks not as heirs to their Classical legacy, and to claim that Greek Classics belonged to Europe. Thus, Classical Greek artefacts were better located in the great museums of the colonial powers. That argument has been maintained, even if moderated, over the subsequent centuries, and explains why little annoys my Greek friends more quickly than the UK’s political statements about the marbles: they are part of a long history of the (former) Great Powers diminishing the Greek state and Greeks themselves.

The argument on the Marbles is caught up in nationalism and colonial legacies. That poses a problem. It is almost an article of faith in our Royal Holloway community that:

Classics belongs to no one Classics belongs to everyone

This is central to our teaching and research. We would not endorse a Greek nationalist claim to the Marbles nor a British colonial claim. So where should the Marbles be?

It seems to me that there is only one answer to that: Athens. The reasons are historical, archaeological, and political. Taking the Marbles to London turned them into pure art. We are supposed to admire the workmanship and style. But the Marbles were so much more than pure beauty. They are/were a representation of the Athenian community. The Parthenon was the religious centre of Athens for millennia and the Marbles are part of that heritage. As Elgin transported them to the Piraeus, the inhabitants of Athens protested: part of their culture was being stolen. To understand the Marbles best, we need to see them in their urban, archaeological context and alongside the remains of the community that built and first valued them. In museological terms, they are far better displayed in the bright sun of Athens, in the spectacular Acropolis museum, than in a room in London. Why should an Athenian have to come to London to see the Marbles rather than a Londoner go to Athens?

There are other political reasons to return them: Britain struggles with the legacies of colonialism. It poisons elements of our cultural life and is weaponised by those who want to divide us. But our community was not divided by this debate. A university is a place where we need to discuss important issues, rationally and with passion. It is our function to talk through difficult issues and pose controversial questions.

In the discussion that followed the lecture, our community came to together to talk. We had about 150 people in the hall. Friends, members of the public, academic staff, post-graduate students and our undergraduates had their say. Many representatives of the Greek community came to join us, including staff from the Greek Embassy. One of the most eloquent contributions came from a first-year student, less than six months into their degree, happy to voice her opinion in front of such an audience.

The event was a brilliant example of what we do: we talk about important issues and we do that together and with respect. We value everyone from our first years to our professors. We take our debates into the community: no ivory tower for us.

The past is always with us. We can’t make a better future without it.

With many thanks to Angelos.

For a recording of the event see https://youtu.be/PQpwPaTUU_Q?si=dl1NtgnO2frg_1Gi

For more on Classics and modern issues, see https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/classics/news/studying-the-classical-world-classical-views-on-modern-issues-11th-july/

On the Delights of Marking

Dr Liz Gloyn

“May is marking month in our department! Especially the last two weeks of it were particularly intense as I’ve had three modules-worth of work come in at once, so everything else had to be put to one side to work through it. You could tell this is the case from the state of my office at home, particularly my desk: with reference books and bits of paper strewn all over it, it was slowly but steadily sinking into quite an advanced state of chaos!

I’ve mainly been involved with teaching third year modules this year, which means that even though getting everything marked in time for the marking deadline has been intense, I’ve had the pleasure of looking at work produced by students at the peak of their academic careers with us. This has included students’ own adaptation of ancient myths for our Thinking Myth module, which always showcases amazing innovation and creativity in a wide range of different media, this year including videogame design and scriptwriting. I’ve also had the pleasure of marking our finalists’ dissertations, which are the capstone of a year working on a project of their choice. It’s one of the delights of this role that when a second year asks me ‘can I do my dissertation on this?’ that I’m usually able to say ‘of course’ and point them to the right person! I think it’s a real strength of how we operate that our students work on such a wide range of fascinating topics for their dissertations, and that we’re able to facilitate some real passion projects as a result. The proof really is in the pudding with these pieces of work – the amount of concentrated thought and reflection that’s been put into them really shows.”

The Futility of Revenge in Homer’s Odyssey: an art exhibition

Megan Griffin, 2nd year Classical Studies student

"During the last week of the Easter holidays, I put on an art exhibition in the library event space surrounding the theme of Revenge in Homer’s Odyssey, though it was only a short exhibition I felt so lucky to welcome over 160 visitors and share the Homeric tradition with so many people both within and outside of the university community. This exhibition was many of my visitors' first time hearing about Homer and I found myself retelling the legend of Odysseus many times over the three days that it ran, increasingly finding better ways to relate its subject matter to new audiences with each retelling. This was a task that was easier than I had expected as I increasingly realized that, despite its antiquity, the Odyssey and Iliad continued to entice audiences today with universal themes that transcend through time.

I also had the pleasure of welcoming many Classicists who were still on campus over the holidays and had many interesting conversations about the Odyssey and the possibilities presented by communicating ancient poetry through modern art. This was my first ever art exhibition and though it was extremely challenging (creatively, academically, emotionally, and organisationally) I also found the whole project profoundly rewarding. Through engaging creatively with the Homeric tradition, I feel I have developed a far greater appreciation of the epics and understand the artistry of Homer to a deeper level. Homer is not a static phenomenon but one that has emerged from years of composers engaging and developing a poetic tradition; it is by continuing to engage in new and creative ways with this tradition that we keep it alive.

I am so grateful to the department of Classics and especially Nick Lowe for allowing me the opportunity to put on an event like this and for supporting me through it. I’d also like to thank everyone who came and were so positive about my artworks; hopefully I will be welcoming many of you back to a bigger, better exhibition next year."

Mothers and Daughters: a creative writing workshop with Demeter and Persephone

Jojo Hills, Masters by Research in Classical Reception

"I was extremely fortunate to run a workshop at Regent’s University this week as part of my internship with Myth and Voice (http://mythandvoice.org/), led by Dr Efi Spentzou. I was working with a creative writing class, which featured a group of undergraduate students who came from a variety of backgrounds and academic courses, from Thailand to Hawaii to Denmark, from psychology to media and communications to international relations and more!

As well as for my internship, I had created this workshop with Efi as part of my master’s thesis, which examines the use of the myth of Demeter and Persephone from the 19th century to modern day, and how retellings of the myth throughout history reflect changes in the female experience. The group took the myth extremely well, they approached the workshop with enthusiasm and had some fantastic thoughts.

I was quite nervous ahead of the workshop, as it had been a while since I led a group of students in a classroom environment! But as this was an informal space for discussion and storytelling, and the group were very welcoming, my nerves quickly abated. I think it is fascinating to discuss mythology with non-classicists, as we so often spend so much time examining and analysing myths to such a degree that it is easy to get lost in them and forget what they are: stories that reflect the human experience. When a participant would say something about the myth that wasn’t ‘accurate’ (how can any one version of a myth be the true version anyway?), I felt myself go to correct them, before realising that we shouldn’t gatekeep these stories, as they provide opportunities for everyone to relate to and use in different ways. So, it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t understand a myth in the same way as I do, the important thing is that they get something from the myth in the first place.

I was extremely honoured to be a part of this group for the workshop, especially as we discussed the topic of mother/daughter relationships, a key theme in the myth, which can sometimes be a difficult subject. At the end of the workshop, we all participated in a bit of freewriting, where I offered four general prompts and the participants could write about any of them (or all of them, as some did!) in whatever format they desired – or they didn’t have to write at all. I was blown away by the vulnerability and honesty shown by the group in their discussions of what it is like to be a daughter or a mother, and how this myth had stimulated their own thoughts and feelings on the topic of this relationship. This opportunity has given me so much to consider for my thesis, and I am sure that the longer I sit with this experience the more it will give me in not only my research and writing, but also in myself and how I approach this myth. I look forward to more Myth and Voice events in the future."