Teaching Fellow and Early Career Fellow (Institute of Advanced Study)

Email: lucrezia dot sperindio1 at warwick dot ac dot uk

FAB2.19
Faculty of Arts Building
University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL

About

I am a teaching fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History and an Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, here at the University of Warwick. I have recently completed my doctorate degree at Warwick with a dissertation entitled ‘Rethinking Horace’s Lyric modus: Horace’s Odes 1-3 and Tragic Choral Lyric’, under the supervision of Prof. Victoria Rimell and Dr. Elena Giusti. Previously, I completed my MPhil degree at the University of Cambridge and my BA degree at King’s College London.

Research interests

My doctoral research explores how lyric form engages with politics and society, with a specific focus on the lyric odes of the Augustan poet Horace. I argue that Horace’s first lyric collection, Odes 1-3, when performing its central ethico-poetical dimension of modus (measure), is profoundly influenced by the intertextual and intergeneric dialogue with Greek and Roman tragedy, considered mostly, but not exclusively, in its choral lyric component. By acknowledging the systematic interaction of tragedy and tragic choral lyric with Horace’s Odes 1-3, Horace’s modus performs a constant and productive confrontation with the historical excesses of his time and gains a political and social currency in actively interacting with and shaping the historical context. I am interested in issues of lyric form and poetics, genre, and intertextuality in Latin literature of the Augustan age and of the Early Empire.

Teaching and supervision

I have been a Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department throughout my doctorate and I taught both seminars and lectures on a wide range of Latin authors, from Cicero’s Philippics to Horace’s Odes and Piny’s Epistles. In the 2023/4 academic year, I teach the undergraduate module Horace, Authority and Authoritarianism.

Outreach Projects

• ‘The End of the Republic’ (2020) Recorded as part of the University of Warwick Dept. of Classics and Ancient History Classical Civilisation Teachers Day 2020 for the A-level ‘Politics of the Late Republic’ module.

Publications

• (2019) ‘The Poetics of Horatian Pudor in Odes 1.6’, in M., Labiano (ed.), De ayer y hoy. Contribuciones multidisciplinares sobre pseudoepígrafos literarios y documentales (De falsa et vera historia 2), Ediciones Clásicas, Madrid, 83-95.

Qualifications

• BA (King’s College London)
• MPhil (Cantab)
• PhD (University of Warwick)