In the final episode of Khameleon Classics, host Shivaike Shah and assistant producer Malin Hay look behind the scenes at the making of the show, and discuss how a project that was conceived as a five-episode miniseries on Medea ended up becomi

Statues Then and Now, with Verity Platt

Jan 16th, 2023 31m 38s

In the last decade, public statues have become a focal point for debates about the remembrance and commemoration of history. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, Edward Colston in Bristol, and Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford: do statues o

Classics and Du Bois, with Mathias Hanses

Jan 9th, 2023 27m 52s

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was one of the foremost thinkers and writers about race in the period directly after Reconstruction. He was also a professor of Classics who engaged closely with a number of Greek and Roman writers, including Cicero,

Classics and the Reconstruction, with Jackie Murray

Dec 19th, 2022 21m 51s

Throughout the Reconstruction era, from the end of the American Civil War in 1865 to the start of the Jim Crow era at the end of the nineteenth century, both Black activists and white supremacists used their classical education in service of th

Classics Beyond Whiteness, with THM Gellar-Goad and Caitlin Hines

Dec 12th, 2022 28m 40s

What happens when, in the wake of worldwide upheaval, a Classics department decides to put into practice the principles of anti-racism and social justice in the classroom? Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is now the first

Classics and the Politics of Migration, with Demetra Kasimis

Dec 5th, 2022 36m 22s

What can reading classical political texts teach us about our own politics? This is the question that Demetra Kasimis, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is answering with her work, which looks at democracy and its d

Classics Beyond Whiteness, with THM Gellar-Goad and Caitlin Hines

Nov 28th, 2022 28m 40s

Latin Poetry in the Caribbean, with John Gilmore

Feb 21st, 2022 31m 59s

The role of Latin in Britain’s eighteenth-century Caribbean colonies was multifaceted. The ability to speak the language was a status symbol for the colonial elite, and Latin texts often served as attempted validations of the colonial project;

Classical Reception: A Failed Revolution? with Luke Richardson

Feb 14th, 2022 29m 11s

For generations, the Classical discipline’s exclusive study of Greece and Rome went unquestioned, as did its position at the heart of the humanities. Greece and Rome’s literature, art and intellectual legacy were seen not only as formative to m

Liquid Antiquity, with Brooke Holmes

Feb 7th, 2022 30m 1s

When we imagine the curation of antiquities, especially classical antiquities, we usually think of preserving the past within museums and other cultural institutions. But we rarely ask what we are preserving, and why, and for whom. The language

Medea and Twentieth-Century Feminism, with Chiara Sulprizio

Jan 31st, 2022 32m 11s

What makes Medea a perennial figure of feminist fascination? Why was the mythological heroine marked as an icon of defiance in feminist movements throughout the twentieth century? In this week’s episode, we hear from Dr Chiara Sulprizio, a Seni

Tadmor-Palmyra: Reconstruction and Digitisation, with Zena Kamash

Jan 24th, 2022 29m 40s

In 2015, the world reacted furiously to the deliberate acts of destruction that the Islamic State group (Da’esh) staged in the Roman-period city of Tadmor-Palmyra in Syria. This provoked numerous plans for reconstruction, with each proposed pro

Medea in Politics from 1750 to 1800, with Anna Albrektson

Jan 17th, 2022 27m 41s

Classical characters had an almost overwhelming cultural presence in eighteenth-century Europe, and Medea was no exception. In the short period between 1750 and the turn of the nineteenth century, one of the most complex characters from Greek m

Classics and Colonial Presences in Egypt, with Heba Abd el Gawad and Usama Ali Gad

Jan 10th, 2022 35m 9s

Egypt’s history since the fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty in 30 BC has been one of continual invasion and reinvasion. During the nineteenth century, when France and Britain began to take notice of this lucrative and strategically placed Ottoman t

Historical Links Between Egypt, Greece and Rome, with Katherine Blouin and Rachel Mairs

Jan 3rd, 2022 42m 45s

In the modern academy, Classics – the study of ancient Greek and Roman language, culture, and society – is usually separated from Egyptology, which deals with ancient Egyptian civilisation and history. But that separation falsifies the real rel

Classics and Eugenics in the USA, with Rebecca Futo Kennedy

Dec 20th, 2021 38m 15s

Classical texts were the core of elite education in the United States from the founding of the country’s first university in the seventeenth century until the 1950s. They served as models for the crafting of the US constitution and proved found

The Medea Myth Before and After Euripides, with Jesse Weiner

Dec 13th, 2021 33m 30s

Medea was a source of fascination for ancient scholars as early as Hesiod’s Theogony, and yet the early classical sources make no mention of the intentional infanticide that Euripides made an infamous and essential part of the myth. Conversely,

Classics and the Modern Alt Right, with Curtis Dozier

Dec 6th, 2021 33m 41s

When Professor Curtis Dozier of Vassar College began documenting the appropriation of Greco-Roman antiquity by white supremacist hate groups, he realised that many aspects of the ancient past are, without distortion, congenial to contemporary w

Expanding the Classical Canon, with Kathleen Cruz

Nov 29th, 2021 32m 20s

How might the field of Classics address the unique concerns and questions posed by its students from diverse backgrounds? One valuable way to answer this question is to privilege approaches to the ancient world traditionally eclipsed by literar

Classics and the British Empire in India, with Phiroze Vasunia

Nov 22nd, 2021 42m 23s

Classical Greece and Rome have long been intertwined with colonialism. India was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and there were extensive trade and cultural contacts between South Asia and the Mediterranean region. When British colonial

Classics and Students of Colour, with Andi Burton Marsh

Nov 15th, 2021 36m 48s

Is Classics outreach working? Does it meet the concerns of students once they’re at university? Shivaike Shah speaks with Andi Marsh, recent University of Oxford graduate, about her experiences studying Classics as a state-educated Black woman.

Classics in Haiti, with Tom Hawkins

Nov 8th, 2021 29m 44s

When Haiti declared its independence from France on 1 January 1804, it began the process of fostering a national culture. One element of this cultural development can be seen at the intersection of Haitian literature with the legacies of ancien

Medea's Performance History, with Fiona Macintosh

Nov 1st, 2021 34m 17s

Shivaike Shah talks to Professor Fiona Macintosh from the University of Oxford, director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, an online research project that has digitised and made accessible thousands of sources relating to

Classics in Nazi Germany, with Helen Roche

Oct 25th, 2021 32m 2s

In both Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, classical literature and history were appropriated to provide a mythic origin and justification for fascist politics. In this episode, Shivaike talks to Helen Roche, Associate Professor of Modern

Victorian Philhellenism and Greek Love, with Daniel Orrells

Oct 18th, 2021 32m 20s

The Greeks – and the Athenians in particular – were lionised by the Victorians for their art, their culture, and their military prowess. But the ancient Greeks also worried the Victorians because they seemed to permit sexual relationships betwe