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Viewing archives for Classics and Joint Schools

The College offers all varieties of the Classics course, including Classics IA-C, IIA-B, and Joint Honours with English, Modern Languages, or Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. For details of these options, please refer to the relevant Faculty websites using the links on the right-hand side of this page. 

Classics at Queen’s is taught by Dr Charles Crowther (Fellow in Ancient History) and Dr Christopher Metcalf (Fellow in Classical Languages and Literature), and Dr Almut Fries (Lecturer in Greek and Latin) and Dr Stefan Sienkiewicz (Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy). The Fellowship at Queen’s also comprises colleagues in English, Modern Languages and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, which makes the College equally convenient for those studying single-honours Classics and those who wish to combine Classics with Joint Honours.

The College’s recent graduates in Classics and Joint Schools have taken up a wide range of professions, from the arts (film, drama, music) to the law. Several now teach Classics in schools, or have gone on to graduate study, in subjects such as Ancient History, Ancient Near Eastern Languages, Arabic, Chinese Philosophy, Classical Literature, English, the History of Religions, and Linguistics, at universities including Cambridge, Chicago, Edinburgh, Harvard, Leiden, London, Oxford, Shanghai (Fudan University), St Andrews, and York. Nothing could better illustrate the breadth of the Classics course! As tutors we always encourage our students to shape their degree in accordance with their individual interests, and we see it as our pleasant duty to do whatever we can to help them thrive. 

If you have any questions about the course, or would like to visit the College, please don’t hesitate to contact Dr Christopher Metcalf (christopher.metcalf@queens.ox.ac.uk) directly. 

Teaching

Classics at Queen’s builds on a long and distinctive tradition. Its characteristic features include a close focus on the ancient sources—many scholars at Queen’s have worked, and continue to work, on publishing newly discovered texts—and an interest in the wider, non-Classical contexts of ancient Greece and Rome. Read a brief profile of Classics at Queen’s. Our scholarly profile directly informs our approach to teaching: knowledge of the ancient languages, and the ability to read, understand, and enjoy ancient texts independently, are among the vital skills that we help our undergraduates to acquire, whatever their previous experience of Greek and Latin. We are also very interested in the many intersections between Classics and other ancient and modern disciplines, and encourage our undergraduates to pursue these aspects of the course if they wish.

The tutorial remains the principal means of instruction. This usually involves two people and the tutor, and discussion of a topic on which the students will have written an essay. Tutorial essays tend to deal with detailed work on particular texts or questions, while the University lectures offer a broader view. The College also provides special language teaching (in addition to the general Faculty-based language classes) in order to help all students, whatever their previous experience, to reach their best possible level in Greek and/or Latin. Furthermore, tutorials are regularly accompanied by reading classes, which are designed to support text-reading in the original languages.

For the first part of the course, until Mods or Prelims, most teaching is done in-house: the tutors and lecturers in Queen’s regularly offer teaching in Greek and Latin literature, ancient history and ancient philosophy. After Mods or Prelims, the students’ choice of subjects determines where they are taught, though much is usually again in College. We encourage our students to develop their individual interests, within Classics or beyond, and to take advantage of the unique breadth of teaching that Oxford has to offer. In recent years, for instance, students reading for Classics and Joint Schools have complemented their Classical work by learning languages such as Akkadian, Arabic, Armenian, Egyptian, French, German, Hebrew, Old Persian, and Sanskrit.

The College Library has an excellent Classical collection that is maintained specifically for the use of undergraduate students. The College also offers generous grants in support of individual academic projects (such as, for instance, attendance at summer schools, or trips to museums or ancient sites).

Admissions

We normally take four candidates each year; there are no specific quotas for individual courses. 

Before the interview season, you will be required to submit two pieces of work.  Ideally, these will be marked essays (not work revised especially for submission).  If you are in doubt about what to submit, do get in touch with us.  You will also take the relevant language tests, or the Language Aptitude Test if you have no Classical languages.  

In the interviews, we are looking for people with a commitment to the study of the very broad Classics courses and the ability to take advantage of the tutorial system.  Before your interview in literature, you will be given a short extract from a work of Classical verse or prose. An English translation will be provided, and no previous knowledge of the text or author will be assumed. The interview is designed to resemble a typical tutorial discussion, and will consist of an open-ended exploration of the text that you have been given.  The interviewers will be looking for intellectual agility and an enquiring mind, and a real commitment to this wide-ranging subject. The interviewers will not test you on factual knowledge. 

You will be given a set of philosophical problems involving logic to look at before philosophy interviews; these problems do not presuppose any knowledge of particular philosophies.   

Please try to relax and enjoy the occasion (people do!): we will not be trying to catch you out, nor is it essential that everything you say is ‘right’; we are interested in your ability to analyse and discuss a topic, not in what you know or do not know.  It is therefore important not to come with pre-prepared ideas to which you intend to stick whatever criticisms may be made of them. 

Please also note the detailed annual reports on Classics and Joint Schools admissions, which prospective applicants may find helpful.

Courses

BA (Hons) Literae Humaniores (‘Classics’)BA (Hons) Classics and EnglishBA (Hons) Classics and Modern LanguagesBA (Hons) Classics and Oriental Studies

Introduction

I studied Greek and Latin at Göttingen and Oxford (Visiting Student, Hertford College) from 1997 to 2002, graduating with the German state examination for secondary-school teachers. I then returned to Oxford for my DPhil in Greek (Corpus Christi College, 2004-2008), after which I held a Junior Research Fellowship at University College (2008-11). After three years of teaching for various Oxford colleges, I came to my current position at Queen’s in 2014. Early in 2021 I gained my ‘Habilitation’ in Göttingen, a post-doctoral degree which permits me to teach at professorial level in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I have since held positions as acting Full Professor in Frankfurt/Main (2021) and Göttingen (2022).

Teaching

At Queen’s I primarily teach Greek and Latin languages for Classical Mods and Prelims. For the Classics Faculty I occasionally teach Greek textual criticism and palaeography and host graduate seminars on Greek poetry. I am also currently supervising a DPhil student working on the use of proverbs in Aristophanes.

Research

My research focuses on archaic and classical Greek epic, lyric and drama. In addition to the literary, linguistic and metrical aspects of the poetic works, I am interested in their textual transmission and reception in ancient and Byzantine scholarship. I also work on comparative Indo-European and Ancient Near Eastern mythology and poetics, with special emphasis on Greece and Anatolia. I have published widely in these areas, including large-scale editions, with introduction and commentary, of the pseudo-Euripidean Rhesus (De Gruyter 2014) and Pindar’s First Pythian Ode (De Gruyter 2023). I am currently preparing the first Oxford Classical Text of Bacchylides and a monograph on Hittite rituals and the ritual antecedents of Greek tragedy.

Publications

A full lust of publications can be found here


Introduction

A product of the Italian state education system, I went to school in the provinces of Milan and Brescia and read Classics at the University of Padua (2010-13). I further pursued my passion for ancient cultures and literatures by doing an MPhil and PhD in Classics at Magdalene and Emmanuel College, Cambridge (2013-18). Then I worked as a Language Teaching Officer in the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge (2018-20); I also was Bye-Fellow at Emmanuel College and Teaching Associate at Queens’ College (2019-20). I moved to Oxford and took up my three-year Research Fellowship at The Queen’s College in October 2020. I am now an Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow in Classics.

Teaching

I am happy to supervise undergraduate theses in Classics or History on topics such as Latin literature (Cicero and early imperial prose) and Latin textual criticism (including palaeography).

Research

Broadly, my research focuses on the reception of Latin literature from Antiquity to our times. In my doctoral thesis I studied the textual history of Cicero’s letters to Atticus in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. I am currently working my thesis into a monograph, and in the long term I plan to re-edit the whole of Cicero’s correspondence.

As a Research Fellow in Classics at The Queen’s College, I am studying a phenomenon of transmission that goes by the name of interpolation – that is, the insertion of non-authorial matter into a text. Specifically, I am surveying, comparing, and trying to explain the different attitudes of critics and readers towards interpolation in Latin classical texts from Antiquity to the Enlightenment.

Research Talk

The video below is of an online talk that I gave for the Queen’s College Symposium in November, 2020 entitled: ‘”This is not what I wrote”. Three ancient victims of forgery, interpolation & fake news.’

Outreach

I am the Outreach Officer for the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) at Queen’s. My new podcast interview series can be found on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Introduction

I grew up in continental Europe and west Africa. In 2003 I came to Britain to study classical and ancient Near Eastern languages in Edinburgh, Oxford and London, graduating with a DPhil in Classics from the University of Oxford in 2013. My first academic appointment was at SOAS, University of London, where I taught as a substitute for the Professor of Babylonian, A R George, in 2012-13. I returned to Oxford as Junior Research Fellow in Lesser Known Languages and Scripts of the Ancient World at Wolfson College (2013-16), and held a postdoctoral research fellowship awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Germany, before joining Queen’s in October 2016.

Teaching

My interest in classical literature was sparked many years ago by a memorable passage in book III of Homer’s Iliad and an enigmatic saying attributed to the philosopher Heraclitus; today I feel immensely fortunate to continue exploring and enjoying a wide range of Greek and Roman authors as a tutor. My teaching, which I seek to adapt to students’ needs and interests, covers the literary elements of the initial (‘Mods’) part of the Classics curriculum, as well as other papers related to early Greek poetry. 

Research

In past research I have explored the relationship between early Greek poetry and the literatures of the ancient Near East, in particular Mesopotamian and Anatolian texts (The Gods Rich in Praise: Early Greek and Mesopotamian Religious Poetry, OUP 2015). My interest in the history of ancient literature and religion, and in detailed textual work, then led me to publish a first edition of Sumerian literary manuscripts of the early second millennium BC (Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection: Literary Sources on Old Babylonian Religion, Pennsylvania State UP 2019). I am now working on a book provisionally entitled Servant, Lover, Fool: Three Myths of Ancient Kingship, in which I will identify and analyse three common story-patterns associated with kingship in early Greek and ancient Near Eastern (especially Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite, Hebrew and Old Persian) sources.

Publications

Please see my Faculty of Classics profile page for research updates and a full list of publications. 

Introduction

After a state grammar school education I read Classics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (1977-80). I have an M.A. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati and a doctorate in Hellenistic History from King’s College London. I have taught at King’s College London and, from 1992 to 1994, the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations in Changchun in northeastern China. I have worked in Oxford since 1994 and was a Research Fellow at Wolfson from 1997 to 2004. I came to Queen’s in 2010 after my appointment as University Lecturer in Greek Epigraphy.

Teaching

At Queen’s I teach the principal Greek history period and thematic papers for Classics and Ancient and Modern History undergraduates. I also teach a graduate seminar in Classical Greek and Latin epigraphy, and supervise graduate students studying Hellenistic history and Greek epigraphy.

Research

My research interests are in Hellenistic Greek history, in particular in the history of institutions, and more generally in Greek and Latin epigraphy. I have current museum and field projects in Chios and in the Commagene region of south-eastern Turkey.

I have been associated with the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, a research unit in the Classics Faculty for epigraphy and papyrology, since its establishment in 1995, and have worked closely with Professor Alan Bowman in a series of projects to improve the reading and decipherment of ancient documents written on wood, lead, stone and other surfaces.

Publications

  • “Inscriptions from the Necropolis of Perrhe”, in Von Kummuh nach Telouch. Historische und archäologische Untersuchungen in Kommagene. (Asia Minor Studien 64, Bonn 2011), 367-394, [with M. Facella]
  • The Customs Law of Asia (OUP, 2008) [joint editor with M. Cottier, M.H. Crawford, B.M. Levick]
  • “The Dionysia at Iasos: its artists, patrons and audience”, in The Greek Theatre and Festivals. Documentary Studies (OUP 2007), 294-334
  • “New Evidence for the Ruler Cult of Antiochos of Commagene from Zeugma”, in Neue Forschungen zur Religionsgeschichte Kleinasiens. (Asia Minor Studien 49, Bonn 2003), 41-80, [with M. Facella]
  • “Minoan Dikta”, ch. 12 of The Palaikastro Kouros. A Minoan Chryselephantine Statuette and its Aegean Bronze Age Context (BSA Studies 6, 2000), 145-148.

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