Dr Joe Watson

About

I came to Warwick in 2022, intitially as a Teaching Fellow in Latin Literature and Language, and now as a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, working on the project 'Queer Appendages'. I hold a BA in Classics from the University of Reading (2017) and a Classics MA from Durham University (2018). I completed my PhD at Durham in 2022, with a thesis entitled 'Narrative Nefas and the Taboos of Incest and Bestiality in Ovid's Metamorphoses' which explored extreme sexualities from a psychoanalytically and narratologically informed perspective.

Prior to university teaching, I used to be a secondary school Latin teacher in the North East. I have long been involved with the JACT Durham Greek and Latin Summer School, where I am Director of Studies and Advanced Latin tutor. I am also on the Executive Committee of the 'Queering the Past(s)' Project. I use he/him/his pronouns.

Research interests

I am principally a Latinist who focuses on the poetry of the Augustan period, especially Ovid, and my first monograph, Incest and Bestiality in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: A Poetics of Perversion, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. I am interested in sex, sexuality and gender in both the ancient world and its receptions, from the extreme to the everyday; in particular, I work on the queerness of gender and sexuality in literature, ancient and modern. My current major research project, funded by the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship scheme under the title 'Queer Appendages', explores the various poems of the Appendix Virgiliana from a queer perspective, thinking about the queerness of the App. Virg.'s worlds, but also the queerness of engaging with these odd, 'appendiceal' poems from the vantage point of the twenty-first century.

These interests have also led me to focus on queer Classical reception in early-20th century literature, especially in the poetry of C. P. Cavafy. I have published on Cavafy several times and will, at some time, return to preparing an edition, translation and commentary of his Poetical and Ethical Notes.

I am also passionate about pedagogy, especially pedagogy that is tailored to the needs of specific groups. I focus on the groups with which I have particular experience—queer and neurodivergent people—and have published work on this.

Publications

Books

Forthcoming. Incest and Bestiality in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: A Poetics of Perversion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Articles and Book Chapters

Forthcoming 2026. 'Sex in Circumlocution: Incest in Augustan Law and Language', Mnemosyne.

2026. 'Beyond Gay History Month: Queering the Past with ‘Queering the Past(s)’', Journal of Classics Teaching 27.53, 37–41.

2025. 'Hell is Other Poets: Tibullus, Ovid and Statius in Queer Elysium', The Journal of Roman Studies. 115, 58–91.

2025. 'Down the Garden Path: Divinity, Space and Poetics in the Carmina Priapea', Classical Philology, 120.3, 352–75.

2025. ‘Classical Cavafy and Cavafy among the Classicists’, in T. Kayalis & V. F. González eds. Cavafy as World Literature. London: Bloomsbury, 121–32.

2025. 'Latin Language Teaching: EDI and Course Intensity. Report on a Workshop Held at the Classical Association Conference 2024’, CUCD Bulletin 54.6. (co-authored with C.-B. Fraser, E. Meijer, F. Modini, L. Mortimer, V. Oulitskaia & C. Ryan).

Forthcoming 2026. ‘Running out of Genres: Atalanta, Elegy, and Epic in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, in D. Longrée, F. Nolfo, C. Panayotakis, & P. Pietquin eds. Ovidian Poetry and its Afterlife: New Approaches and Perspectives. Leuven: Peeters

Forthcoming 2027. ‘Worlds at Angles: Sappho, Cavafy and the Queer Potentialities of Utopia’, in E. Perry, M. Haworth & D. Machado eds. Classical Receptions and the Struggle for Social Justice. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

2022. ‘Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition. 29.2, 190–213.

2022. ‘Of Late I Dream of Lesbos: Renée Vivien’s Queer Utopias in the Aeolian Mode’ in K. Moore ed. The Routledge Companion to the Reception of Ancient Greek and Roman Gender and Sexuality. Abingdon: Routledge, 58–83.

2021. ‘Reframing Iphis and Caeneus: Trans Narratives and Socio-Linguistic Gendering in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, Helios. 48.2, 145–74.

Other

2025. (as translator) "Issue VII" in L. Morgan & M. Lombardi-Nash eds. Alaudae, Volume I (1889-1890). London: Bloomsbury.

2023. Testimony on trans Classics for Goff, B. & Petsalis-Diomidis, A. ‘Inclusive Classics and Pedagogy: Teachers, Academics, and Students in Conversation’, in F. McHardy & D. Libatique eds. Diversity and the Study of Antiquity in Higher Education: Perspectives from North America and Europe. Abingdon: Routledge, 124–25.

2022. ‘Eros: A queer reading’, commissioned blog post for National Museums Scotland. (click here to read)

Teaching and supervision

Undergraduate modules (2026–2027)

• CX???: Poetless Poems: Authorship, Oddity and the Appendix Virgiliana

Undergraduate modules (recent years):

• CX115/CX215/CX305: Latin 1
• CX101/CX201/CX301: Latin 2
• CX289/CX389: Roman Sexual Poetics: Navigating Sex, Sexuality and Gender in Latin Poetry 

• CX114: Encounters with Latin Texts 

• CX112: Ancient Thought: Philosophy, Politics, Science (guest lecturer)
• CX230/CX330: Epic and Epyllion (2024-2025)

Administrative roles

• Work in Progress Seminar Series Organiser
• IT Officer
• EDI representative
• Student experience representative