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Conference
Classics and the Spectacular under Fascism
Monday 16 December 2019
Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, Oxford
Chairs
Speakers
Vasileios Balaskas
Vasileios Balaskas is a PhD candidate in Classical Archaeology at the University of Malaga and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, working on a jointly directed thesis. His doctoral research examines the modern reuse of ancient theatres in Greece, Spain and Italy through the use of inedited archival materials. His main research interests include classical reception in the 19th and 20th centuries, with focus on ancient drama, national identities and collective memory. Holding a graduate degree in Classical Philology, he remains dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to classical antiquities. Recently, he has also been working on the classical iconography of modern Greek coins and their relationship with national claims.
Giulia Bordignon
Giulia Bordignon is an independent researcher and former fellow in Classical reception studies at the Università Iuav of Venice. Her research interests include: history and fortune of ancient drama; afterlife of archaeological models in modern art history; iconology and cultural studies (Aby Warburg’s method). Among her publications: Riemersione del pathos dell’annientamento: Mnemosyne Atlas, Plate 41 in “Engramma” 157 (2018); (ed.) Scene dal mito: Iconologia del dramma antico (Guaraldi, 2015); “Il rispetto dell’archeologia non è schiavitù”. Memoria dell’antico e urgenza del presente nell’opera di Duilio Cambellotti per il Teatro greco di Siracusa, in “Dioniso”, III (2014); "Musicista poeta danzatore e visionario". Forma e funzione del coro negli Spettacoli classici di Siracusa 1914-1948 (INDA, 2012).
Giovanna Casali
Giovanna Casali is a second year PhD candidate in Literary and Philological Cultures at the University of Bologna, where she graduated in Philology, Literature and classical Tradition. During her classical studies, she attended many classes of musicology; meanwhile, she also graduated in oboe at the Conservatorio G. B. Martini of Bologna. The reception and the consequent re-elaborations of classical sources into the Opera is the main focus of her research. Her PhD project (Tutor: Professor Renzo Tosi) analyses the reception of the mythical figures of Herakles and Alexander the Great in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Opera focusing on the sources the different Operas were based on, the librettists' adaptions of ancient myths and histories, and the influence of different cultural contexts into a myth's interpretation. Another focus of her researches is ancient Greek music, with particular attention to its reception and re-elaborations.
Natalie Minioti
She was born in Athens. She studied Italian Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Undergraduate Degree). She obtained a postgraduate diploma at the Department of Theater Studies of the University of Patras and a Ph.D. degree at the Department of Theater also at Aristotle University, on “Presentation and Interpretation of the Theatrical performances of the Syracuse Festival (1914 -1939)”. She has taught ‘20th Century Theater History” and “Scenic Approaches to Ancient Drama” at the Department of Theater Studies of the University of Nafplion and at several drama schools in Athens. She has participated in theatrical conferences inside and outside Greece and has published articles in theatrical scientific journals. She has worked as a dramatist in theater productions (National Theater, Athens Festival, etc.). Currently she participates in a research team which has been working on the reception of ancient drama in Greece from 1975 to 1995: that is, from the Fall of the Junta, to Greece’s Entrance to the European Union and then on to the New Balkans. The team is working with theatre reviews of ancient drama productions creating, on the way, a digital database, which will be freely accessible on the internet at the beginning of 2020.
Dimitris Plantzos
Dimitris Plantzos is a classical archaeologist, educated at Athens and Oxford. His research mostly focuses on Greek art and archaeology, archaeological theory and classical reception. His Greek-language textbook on Greek Art and Archaeology, first published in 2011 by Kapon Editions, was published in 2016 in English and is now available by American publishers Lockwood Press in Atlanta, Georgia. He was co-editor of the volume A Singular Antiquity. Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in 20th century Greece (published in Athens in 2008) and the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Greek Art (published in 2012; paperback edition 2018). His more recent books are: Archaeologies of the Classical, an overview of archaeological method in the post-positivist era, published by Eikostos Protos in 2014; The Recent Future, a study of archaeological biopolitics in contemporary Greece, published in 2016 by Athenian publisher Nefeli; and his study The Art of Painting in Ancient Greece, published by Kapon Editions and Lockwood Press in 2018. He is co-director of the Argos Orestikon Excavation Project and an associate editor for the Journal of Greek Media and Culture; he teaches classical archaeology and reception at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Helene Roche
Dr. Helen Roche (BA/MPhil/PhD Cantab.) is Assistant Professor in Modern European Cultural History at the University of Durham. Her publications include Sparta's German Children (2013), Brill's Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (ed., 2018), and The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas (forthcoming with Oxford University Press).
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