Edith Hall
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edithmayhall.bsky.social
Edith Hall
@edithmayhall.bsky.social

Durham University Classics Prof keen on Aristotle, visual art, Greek theatre/pots, labour/anti-racist history, prison education, Parthenon reunification. All views my own. Also on Twitter @edithmayhall

Edith Hall is a British scholar of classics, specialising in ancient Greek literature and cultural history, and professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. From 2006 until 2011 she held a chair at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she founded and directed the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome until November 2011. She resigned over a dispute regarding funding for classics after leading a public campaign, which was successful, to prevent cuts to or the closure of the Royal Holloway Classics department. Until 2022, she was a professor at the Department of Classics at King's College London. She also co-founded and is Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University, Chair of the Gilbert Murray Trust, and Judge on the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry translation. Her prizewinning doctoral thesis was awarded at Oxford. In 2012 she was awarded a Humboldt Research Prize to study ancient Greek theatre in the Black Sea, and in 2014 she was elected to the Academy of Europe. She lives in Cambridgeshire. .. more

Art 25%
History 24%

Beating November Blues #3: pretend to be Hera getting married to Zeus at a festival, and bribe a friendly serious-faced satyr to wear a splendid crown and protect your lovely coiffure from the elements with an umbrella-cum-parasol.
By ArchaiOptix - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Beating the November / Blues Fun in Greek Sun suggestion #2: hold an impromptu party and a wine bowl balancing competition. Cup by Douris, circa 490 BCE

I hate November so much I'm going to cheer myself up with a new series of some of my favourite ancient Greek pots depicting ways to have fun in the sun: #1: Donkey ride. Athenian cup by Epictetus c. 510 BCE

The play included an enactment of a prophecy by Teiresias about the end of the civilised world

Thespian friends! This day in 534 BCE is traditionally held to have seen the premiere of the first ever theatre performance by Thespis of Icaria, who took his cart of masks round the villages of Attica to impersonate mythical figures in marketplaces.

Reposted by Edith Hall

The Theatre of Dionysus
Professor Edith Hall
Gresham College
youtu.be/7cjPtH5vA5I?...
The Theatre of Dionysus
YouTube video by Gresham College
youtu.be

On #UnescoWorldChildrensDay just a lovely mosaic from Villa del Casale, Piazza Armerina, Sicily, 4th century EC. Boys, birds, bushes and a chirpy caterpillar. Lovely.

Comrades! This is how to explain the Greek dramatic chorus, performed as part of military training of youth. THRILLING. Dance and Drill. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI93...
Māori All Blacks perform their haka against Ireland
YouTube video by All Blacks
www.youtube.com

People often ask whether I am related to the great American archaeologist Edith Hall (Dohan). Sadly, no. She just looked so cool riding to her sites. I "dig" the hat-and-cravat look.

On world drum day, here are two lovely ancient ladies banging a tympanon (frame-drum).

On this day in 332 BCE Alexander of Macedon was crowned Pharaoh of Egypt. Time for a granite statue now in Liebieghaus museum, Frankfurt and a copper alloy bust now in the Met, New York

Reposted by Edith Hall

Professor @edithmayhall.bsky.social, from our Department of Classics and Ancient History, has been awarded the 2024 International Hellenic Prize for her acclaimed book Facing Down the Furies. Discover more 👉 www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

#TransformativeHumanities @durhamclassics.bsky.social

Interested in what Euripides' Bacchae has to say to modern psychoanalysts? Attend a hybrid event on January 31st with me, a theatre-maker and a psychoanalyst. Free for secondary school students. psychoanalysis.org.uk/civicrm-even...

Reposted by Edith Hall

Physics: its birth in Greek Ionia | Professor Edith Hall
Gresham College
www.youtube.com/live/iQG141E...
Physics: its birth in Greek Ionia
YouTube video by Gresham College
www.youtube.com

Reposted by Edith Hall

I don’t believe I have ever seen anyone post about this one. If you’ve read it, what did you think?

#Booksky
#haveyoureadthis

Reposted by Edith Hall

🎉 Congratulations to Prof. Edith Hall who, along with Prof. Alison Sharrock, has published a special collection of 'Green Letters' on 'Trees in Ancient Greek and Roman Poetry: An Ecocritical Approach to Classics'

🔗 tinyurl.com/y83r95d8

Why is Plato’s Atlantis a Y-Chromosome thing? I’m running an international conference on in it in Durham today and embarrassingly could not persuade a single female to supplement the all-male responses to the Call for Papers. I tried so hard

Reposted by Edith Hall, Ailsa Cox

We're very proud to announce the winner of this year's prize: Edith Hall's compelling & insightful 'Facing Down the Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me' (Yale UP). A brilliant, moving book for experts & general readers alike - congratulations @edithmayhall.bsky.social @yalebooks.bsky.social!

Gobsmacked that Facing down the Furies wins 2025 International (formerly London) Hellenic Prize. Good to see mental health issues recognised. Here's to my valiant late mother, Brenda Hall née Henderson, who faced them down, supreme friend Peggy Reynolds and @rickypo.bsky.social, sine quibus non

Reposted by Edith Hall

Our #bookoftheweek is Edith Hall's new reading of Homer's Iliad as one root in the beginning of ecological disaster for contemporary society. Thought-provoking and smart, Hall astounds in this fresh perspective on how ancient history permeates our environment today. ☀️

Reposted by Edith Hall

@edithmayhall.bsky.social
Much enjoyed Epic of the Earth, read after hearing your talk on 9th October @britishacademy.bsky.social. Next week: environmental justice in respect of ecocide: www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...
Ecocide, Human Rights, and Environmental Justice Conference
www.sas.ac.uk

What day?

Thanks, Gil. I know nothing about how to get fiction published!

Friends, I’ve written a novel. It’s about how the Gen Z children of dysfunctional boomers Clytemnestra and Agamemnon try to move on in Crimea, Thessaly and Vravrona. Now I just need to find a publisher! Any suggestions?

I had a blast at Berwick on Tweed Literary Festival today being brilliantly interviewed by archaeologist Prof James Crowe on my Iliad book. Lovely town. I want to live here.

Reposted by Edith Hall

What have the Ancient Greeks got to do with the environmental crisis? The fantastic @edithmayhall.bsky.social now giving another historical view

My tribute to Tony Harrison last week was to read his great, last, valedictory poem ‘Polygons’ at Delphi, where he started it.

Pre-Raphaelite Simeon Solomon was born this day 1840. He suffered prosecution and persecution, aggravated by antisemitism, for homosexuality. His Toilet of a Roman Lady (1869) was inspired by Pompeii frescoes, especially this one of Dido

Reposted by Ailsa Cox

This coming Sunday, three historic performances of the late, great Tony Harrison's masterpiece "v." in the Leeds graveyard where it's set. I'm speaking before the final reading. Please come. slunglow.org/v-a-homecomi...
@lrb.co.uk
@richardburgon.bsky.social