Edith Hall
@edithmayhall.bsky.social
1.3K followers 560 following 340 posts

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

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Reposted by Edith Hall

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

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

edithmayhall.bsky.social
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

edithmayhall.bsky.social
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

Reposted by Edith Hall

edithmayhall.bsky.social
Extremely sad that my much-loved friend and ally of over thirty-five years, the great poet, dramatist, socialist and acerbic wit Tony Harrison, died yesterday morning, peacefully, with his devoted partner, actress Sian Thomas, at his side. I'm so glad I visited them last week.

edithmayhall.bsky.social
Thrilled the Special Issue of Green Letters I edited with Alison Sharrock is now online if you have access to Taylor and Francis. Mostly on trees in epic from Homer to Nonnus

Reposted by Edith Hall

igrct.bsky.social
📣 ANOTHER EVENT! 📣

We are holding a book launch for the volume "Time, Tense, and Genre in Ancient Greek Literature", edited by Connie Bloomfield-Gadêlha and @edithmayhall.bsky.social.

🎟️ www.tickettailor.com/events/thein...
⏰4PM-6PM, 8/10.
📍Peel Lecture Theatre, University of Bristol. BS8 1SS.
The poster for the event. It features an unfinished painting of a woman with no face, standing on a cliff.

edithmayhall.bsky.social
My daughter has just found this in Istanbul

edithmayhall.bsky.social
Yesterday at Ye Houses of Parliament my former PhD student and colleague Dr Peter Swallow MP hosted the launch of my book with Durham colleague Prof Arlene Holmes-Henderson promoting Classical Civilisation and Ancient History in secondary education. It was a joy.

edithmayhall.bsky.social
On this day 44 BCE Cleopatra announced her son Caesarion co-ruler of Egypt. Since Caesar's propaganda equated Cleopatra with Isis-Venus, this Pompeii image of Venus & Cupid may be Cleo & son. However silly, it's not as bad as the choice of an uber-Aryan sprog = Caesarion in "that" movie.

edithmayhall.bsky.social
On #InternationalCosplayDay, recall that Herodotus says when c. 566 BCE Peisistratus returned to Athens he hired a tall woman, Phye, to impersonate the goddess Athena as his escort to legitimise his claim to sovereignty. Worth a try if you crave absolute power: it worked for him

edithmayhall.bsky.social
Love him or hate him, classical tradition people can't ignore Jacques-Louis David, btd 1748, who ranges from ludicrous (Mars & Venus) to sublime: Brutus' face in The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (1789) grimly presages the gore & disillusionment of the Reign of Terror

Reposted by Edith Hall

nataliehaynes.bsky.social
It's radio repeat day! Catch me and Prof @edithmayhall.bsky.social discussing the Nigella of Ancient Greece, goddess of hearth and home (and carbs and donkeys) Hestia, at 9:30am on BBC Radio 4 📻 🍞

🎧 Listen again on BBC Sounds: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand...

edithmayhall.bsky.social
These two Ancient Greek plays on in London mid-September are brilliantly acted and directed. Thiasos really know what they’re doing with comedy. I’m speaking on 17th. thecockpit.org.uk/show/euripides…

edithmayhall.bsky.social
On #WorldLakeDay the lagoon at Kalloni on Lesvos where Aristotle invented marine zoology and his best friend Theophrastus studied wetland plants. I was there in 2016 with darling daughter Sarah Poynder m.youtube.com/watch?v=-moYjt… who made this film

edithmayhall.bsky.social
Solidarity to all my US feminist friends of any gender in the face of misogyny on Women’s Equality Day, commemorating August 26th 1920 when the 19th Amendment became law and recognised women's right to vote. Time to bang them cymbals

edithmayhall.bsky.social
On #InternationalDogDay a gorgeous Athenian drinking vessel in the shape of a beautiful dog's head, in loving memory of the only dog I've ever been best friends with, Finlay Poynder, who died almost exactly a year ago and I think about every single day @rickypo.bsky.social

edithmayhall.bsky.social
The book images that inspired novelist Barry Unsworth, author of Iphigenia novel The Songs of the Kings, at age 5: Blanche Winder, Once Upon a Time: Children's Stories from the Classics. Images by Burslem boy Harry G. Theaker. LOVE his Medea and Pan with bunnies.

edithmayhall.bsky.social
#InternationalStrangeMusicDay is a good excuse to post a couple of creepy sirens. The Victorians deleted the properly scary avian elements to indulge in soft-porn full human female nudes in their paintings.

edithmayhall.bsky.social
On UNESCO #InternationalDayfortheRemebranceoftheSlaveTradeanditsAbolition commemoration of marriage of a butcher's ex-slaves, Lucius Aurelius Hermia to Aurelia Philematium. "She was the only one for me, and lived her life faithful to her faithful husband". Aww. 80 BCE From Lazio, now BM.

edithmayhall.bsky.social
Finally published and Open Access to read for free via this link by anyone interested in introducing classical subjects to secondary education. A delight to see my co-author Arlene Holmes-Henderson today. liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/.../97818008...

edithmayhall.bsky.social
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, born 19/08/1621, saw humour in the myth of Juno demanding the cow into which Jupiter had transformed her love rival Io as a gift. Top god looks pathetic; Juno totally in control; Io gorgeous but bemused. I love the spikey coronet and usurped pet peacock