Research

I work on the aesthetics and socio-political contextualizability of archaic and classical Greek literature, and of lyric poetry in particular. My first book, Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic TraditionLink opens in a new window, sought to rehabilitate the reputation of this underappreciated poet by situating his work in the ethnic, political, and cultural milieu of early classical Greece; I have also recently edited a collection of essays discussing the interrelation between poetry and culture on the Greek island of Aegina in the 5th century BC: Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry. Myth, History, and Identity in the Fifth Century BCLink opens in a new window. Pindar's Eyes: Visual and Material Culture in Epinician Poetry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. A book-length survey of lyric scholarship, Greek Lyric of the Archaic and Classical Periods: From the Past to the Future of the Lyric SubjectLink opens in a new window, has recently been published by Brill Classics as issue 1 of their Research Perspectives in Classical Poetry.

In recent years I have turned to investigate archaic and classical Greek literature in comparativist and theoretical-philosophical dimensions, partly influenced by colleagues and partly also fostered by the interdisciplinary open-mindedness of our students. Papers in print and forthcoming include work on Thucydides, on Anne Carson, on phenomenological and ecocritical readings of Pindar. I am also currently writing about the classical affordances of thinking with Alice Oswald's Nobody in the lyrical, formal interstices between classical and modern literature and thought, as part of a wider book project on a relational Classics.

Current interests cover aspects of the relation between the modalities of Greek lyric form, phenomenology and environmental philosophy, 20th- and 21st-century literature and thought, and modern art, including photography: at least one project is emerging here.

I am a member of a Greek Poetry and Poetics international research seminar, which brings together like-minded scholars with interests in Greek literature and thought, comparative literature, and critical theory for discussion of work in progress and for group reading. I am also a member of the Network for the Study of Archaic and Classical Greek SongLink opens in a new window.