About

Elena Giusti joined the Classics and Ancient History department at Warwick in 2017, where she is currently an Associate Professor in Latin Literature and Language. She was previously Research Fellow in Classics at St John's College Cambridge (2015-2017) and University Teacher in Classics at the University of Glasgow (2014-2015). She studied at the University of Rome La Sapienza (BA and MA) and at King's College Cambridge (PhD).

Research interests

I am broadly interested in Roman literature and thought, with a specialism in Augustan literature and Virgil in particular. My first monograph (Carthage in Virgil's Aeneid: Staging the Enemy under Augustus, Cambridge: CUP) explores the ideological use of Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid, investigating ways in which the poem constructs, exploits and subverts notions of Romans and Barbarians, and hides memories of both Punic and Civil Wars behind a mythical but cautionary tale.

I am currently on leave on a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to pursue a monographic project on literary representations of Africa in Latin Literature. I am also working on a book on Virgil's Dido and her reception (Dido of Carthage, London: Bloomsbury), on a commentary on Aeneid Book 5 for the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, and on the editing of the Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race (with Rosa Andújar and Jackie Murray). In the pipeline, I am planning a monograph on conspiratorial readings in Augustan poetry.

I have published articles and book chapters at the junctures between traditional philology, cultural and intellectual history and literary theory, with special interests in ideology critique, postcolonial studies and feminist theories. Many of my contributions develop from close readings of single passages; others analyse Latin texts to highlight various ancient approaches to literary criticism; others engage meaningfully with how modern philosophers can help us understand aspects of the classical texts. As a common feature, my publications seek to emphasise how ancient literature is not epiphenomenal to historical and political contexts, but is in fact actively engaged in shaping them.

I love working with colleagues and I have been involved in a number of collaborative projects. I am co-editor (with Tom Geue) of Unspoken Rome: Absence in Latin Literature and its Reception (CUP); of a special journal issue of Vergilius on the theme of Vergil and the Feminine (with my colleague Victoria Rimell); of a special journal issue of Ramus on different interpretative readings of the Vitruvian man (with Mathias Hanses and Giovanna Laterza). I am also currently planning a conference on Classics and Italian Colonialism at the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome (with Samuel Agbamu).

I am happy to supervise students in Latin literature and its reception, especially on projects that relate Latin literary texts to political, historical and philosophical thought, and on projects that touch upon comparative literature or classical reception. I am also interested in comparisons between Western and Eastern Classics (I can read and speak Japanese and have some basics of Mandarin Chinese) and in the reception of Greco-Roman literature in Japanese literature and culture.

Teaching and supervision

In 2018-2019 I developed a new module, Africa and the Making of Classical Literature. The module, which has been the subject of an IATL Academic Fellowship, considers the import of north Africa in the shaping of Western Classical Literature in the Mediterranean, and investigates the simultaneous erasure of Africa from the Western Classical canon. It also explores and discusses the history of the equation of the Classical world with modern (and colonialist) Europe, and the more recent attempts to 'decolonise' the Western Classics, together with the reactions to them (such as the famous 'Black Athena Debate' of the 80s). Thanks to generous support of the IATL, the HRC and the IAS I was able to invite a number of national and international speakers to deliver Public Lectures in connection to it in 2018-2019. I was also able to interview some of them on their work. These lectures have been the first in a new seminar series entitled Classical Connections, dedicated to Classical Reception Studies, Comparative Classical Studies, Comparative Literature with Classics and Ancient Global Classics.

In 2021-2022 I have developed two new 15 CATS modules in Latin Literature: Horace, Authority and Authoritarianism and Metamorphosis in Latin Poetry.

PhD Supervision

• Alex Tadel ‘The Female Authorial Voice in the Venetian Quattrocento’ (co-supervised)
• Elena Claudi, ‘The Representation of Otherness in the Imagines of Philostratus’ (co-supervised)
• Lucrezia Sperindio, ‘Tragedy and the Tragic in Horace’s Epodes and Odes’ (co-supervised)

Administrative roles

On research Leave, Courtesy of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship

Publications

Monographs

• (in preparation, under contract) Dido of Carthage, London: Bloomsbury.
• (2018) Carthage in Virgil's Aeneid: Staging the Enemy under Augustus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Commentaries

• (under contract) Virgilio: Eneide Libro V, Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Edited Volumes

• (forthcoming) ed. with Rosa Andújar and Jackie Murray. The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race, Cambridge University Press.
• (forthcoming, 2023) ed. with M. Hanses and G. Laterza. Homo bene figuratus inter disciplinas: Methodological Variations on a Single Passage (Vitruvius De Architectura III.1), special issue of Ramus.
• (2021) ed. with V. Rimell. Vergil and the Feminine, special issue of Vergilius 67.
• (2021) ed. with T. Geue. Unspoken Rome: Absence in Latin Literature and its Reception, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Articles and Book Chapters

• (forthcoming, 2023) ‘Rac(ializ)ing Dido’, Proceedings of the Virgil Society 31.

• (forthcoming) (The Problem with) Decoding Dido’, Special Issue of Global Antiquities, eds. T. Wimperis and D. Wright.

• (forthcoming) ‘La Didone virgiliana e la poetica dell’errare’, in Migliore, E., Oliva, M. and Vergara, C. (eds.) Noster delectat error: l’errore tra filologia e letteratura, Società Editrice Fiorentina.

• (forthcoming, 2023, with G. Laterza) ‘Vitruvius’ Homo bene figuratus: Preliminary Remarks’ in E. Giusti, M. Hanses and G. Laterza (eds.) Vitruvius’ Homo bene figuratus: Methodological Variations on a Single Passage (De architectura 3.1), special issue of Ramus.

• (forthcoming, 2023) ‘Lucan’s Magico-Medical Psylli’, in C. Blanco, A. Hahn and S. Martorana (eds.) Body and Medicine in Latin Poetry, Supplementary volume of Trends in Classics, Berlin: De Gruyter.
• (forthcoming, 2023) ‘Haec de Africa: Rome’s Imagined Africa and the Limits of Fiction’, in Blouin, K. and Akrigg, B. Handbook of Classics and Postcolonial Theory, London: Routledge.
• (forthcoming. 2023) ‘The Techne that Races: Phoenician-Punic Technosômata in Homer and Plautus’, in G. M. Chesi and M. Gerolemou (eds.) Technosômata in Classical Antiquity, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• (2023) ‘Virgilian Criticism and the Intertextual Aeneid: Review Article of Joseph Farrell (2021) Juno's Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity, Princeton’, Mnemosyne.

• (2023) ‘Africa and the Making of Classical Literature: On Decolonizing Greco-Roman Literature Syllabi’, in M. K. Okyere Asante, D. van Schoor and K. Ackah (eds.) Decolonizing Classics in Africa: History, Strategies, Challenges, and Prospects, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 65.1, 67-78.

• (2022) ‘Horace's Ode 1.12: Subterranean Lyrics’, The American Journal of Philology 143.1, 75-107.
• (2021, with V. Rimell) ‘Vergil and the Feminine: Introduction’, in E. Giusti and V. Rimell (eds.) Vergil and the Feminine, Vergilius 67, 3-23.
• (2021, with T. Geue) 'Unspoken Rome: Introduction', in Geue, T. and Giusti, E. (eds.) Unspoken Rome: Absence in Latin Literature and its Reception, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-16.
• (2021) ‘Caesarism as Stasis from Gramsci to Lucan: an “Equilibrium with Catastrophic Prospects”', in A. M. Cimino and E. Zucchetti (eds.) Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World, London: Routledge, 239-54.
• (2021) ‘The End is the Beginning is the End: Apocalyptic Beginnings in Augustan Poetry,’ in H. Marlow, K. Pollmann and H. Van Noorden (eds.) Eschatology in Antiquity, London: Routledge, 307-19.
• (2020) 'Casta Diva: Juno's "Unexpected Pain" in Statius' Thebaid', EuGeStA 10, 163-206.
• (2019) ‘Aeneid 12: A Cyborg Border War’ in G. M. Chesi and F. Spiegel (eds.) Classical Literature and Posthumanism, London: Bloomsbury, 275-83.
• (2019) ‘Ovid’s Ars Poetica: Metapoetic Didactic in the Ars Amatoria,’ in L.G. Canevaro and D. O’Rourke (eds.) Didactic Poetry from Homer and Hesiod Onwards: Knowledge, Power, Tradition, Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 151-77.
• (2019) ‘Bunte Barbaren Setting Up the Stage: Re-inventing the Barbarian on the Georgics’ Theatre-Temple,’ in B. Xinyue and N. Freer (eds.) (2019), Virgil's Georgics: Reflections and New Perspectives, London: Bloomsbury, 105-14.
• (2018) ‘Tiresias, Ovid, Gender and Trouble: Generic Conversions from Ars into Tristia,’ in Ramus 47.1, 1-31.
• (2017) ‘The Metapoetics of Liber-ty. Horace’s Bacchic Ship in Seneca’s De Tranquillitate Animi,’ in M. Stöckinger, K. Winter and T. Zanker (eds.) Horace and Seneca: Interactions, Intertexts, Interpretations, Berlin: De Gruyter, 239-63.
• (2017) ‘Virgil’s Carthage: a Heterotopic Space of Empire,’ in M. Asper and V. Rimell (eds.)Imagining Empire: Political Space in Hellenistic and Roman Literature, Heidelberg, 133-50.
• (2016) ‘Did Somebody Say Augustan Totalitarianism? Duncan Kennedy's Reflections, Hannah Arendt's Origins, and the Continental Divide over Virgil's Aeneid,’ in Dictynna 13.
  
• (2016) ‘My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy: Virgil’s Illogical Use of Metus Hostilis,’ in P. Hardie (ed.) Augustan Poetry and the Irrational, Oxford, 37-55.
• (2016) ‘Dithyrambic Iambics: Epode 9 and its General(s’) Confusion,’ in P. Bather and C. Stocks (eds.) Horace's Epodes: Contexts, Intertexts, and Reception, Oxford, 131-51.
• (2015) ‘Caesar Criss-Crossing the Rubicon: a Palindromic Acrostic in Lucan (BC 1.218-22),’ in The Classical Quarterly n.s. 65, 892-4.
• (2014) ‘Once More Unto the Breach: Virgil’s Arae and the Treaty of Philinus,’ in Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 107.1, 61-79.
• (2014) ‘Virgil's Carthaginians at Aen.1.430-6: Cyclopes in Bees' Clothing,’ in The Cambridge Classical Journal 60, 37-58.

Reviews

• (forthcoming) Review of J. Dyson Hejduk, The God of Rome. Jupiter in Augustan Poetry (New York: Oxford UP 2020), Gnomon.

• (2022) Review of I. Hesekamp Das Bild von Africa in der augusteischen Dichtung: poetische Konstruktionen eines geographischen Raumes (Vergil, Aeneid – Horaz – Properz) (Berlin and Boston 2021), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2022.07.10.

• (2020) Review of Lee M. Fratantuono and R. Alden Smith, Aeneid 8: Text, Translation, and Commentary, Mnemosyne Supplementum 416 (Leiden; Boston 2018), in The Journal of Roman Studies.
• (2018) Review of L. Bocciolini Palagi, La musa e la furia. Interpretazione del secondo proemio dell’Eneide (Testi e Manuali per l’insegnamento universitario del latino 135) (Bologna 2016), in Classical Review 68.2.

• (2018) Review of S. J. Heyworth and J. H. W. Morwood, A Commentary on Vergil, Aeneid 3 (Oxford 2017), in Classical Review 68.2.

• (2018) Review of H.-P. Stahl, Poetry Underpinning Power. Vergil’s Aeneid: the Epic for Emperor Augustus. A Recovery Study (Swansea 2016), in Classical Review 68.1.
• (2016) Review of A. Ziosi, Didone Regina di Cartagine di Chistopher Marlowe: Metafore virgiliane nel Cinquecento (Roma 2015), in Lexis 34, 481-3.
• (2016) Review of H. Baltussen and P. J. Davis (eds.) The Art of Veiled Speech: Self-Censorship from Aristophanes to Hobbes (Philadelphia 2015), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.06.24: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2016/2016-06-24.html
• (2015) Review of N. Horsfall, Virgil Aeneid 6, A Commentary (Berlin 2013), in The Journal of Roman Studies 105: 432-34.
• (2014) Review of J. Godwin, Ovid Metamorphoses III An Extract: 511-733 (London and New York 2014), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2014.08.06: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014-08-06.html

Entries 

• (under submission) 'Virgil', 'Servius', 'Servius Auctus aut Danielinus', in Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Phoenician Culture Vol. IV - Written Sources: Language, Epigraphy and Literature.
• (under submission) ‘Classics and the Study of Africa’, Oxford Bibliographies.
• Giusti, E. and Lagrou, S. (forthcoming) ‘Savagery / Sauvagerie,’ in J.-P. Guez, F. Klein, J. Peigney and E. Prioux (eds.) Dictionnaire des images du poétique dans l’Antiquité.
• Giusti, E. and Lagrou, S. (forthcoming) ‘Torture, Punishment / Torture, Châtiment,’ in J.-P. Guez, F. Klein, J. Peigney and E. Prioux (eds.) Dictionnaire des images du poétique dans l’Antiquité.

Chronicles