Faculty of Classics - University of Cambridge

Main Navigation

• Home
• Contact
• The Faculty
• Prospective Students
• Current Students
• Library
• Museum

Many of the most exciting questions in the contemporary study of the ancient world cannot be adequately approached by the standard techniques of philology, philosophy, history or archaeology on their own. They require approaching ancient culture simultaneously with the whole range of disciplinary tools. ‘X’ or ‘Interdisciplinary Classics’ was founded in Cambridge to explore these questions at all levels of teaching and research, and offers what has rapidly become one of the most popular groups of courses in the Faculty. It capitalizes on Cambridge's unique range of intellectual resources to provide a different sort of classical study from that offered by other departments in Britain.

For undergraduates

Each year ‘X’ offers two part II courses, each of which takes a central issue in Classics, examining it from several different angles and through diverse genres of evidence (literary, visual, philosophical, linguistic, ancient and modern). Discussion is paramount: lectures are supplemented by two-hour classes in which areas of expertise are shared and ideas tested. Courses change regularly as the most pressing questions in contemporary Classics change. On offer at the moment are ‘Gods and Idols’ and ‘Prostitutes and Saints’. Previous papers include ‘Myth’, ‘Cultural Identity’, ‘Personal Politics’, ‘Time’, ‘Rhetoric’, ‘The Body in Antiquity’, ‘Death’ and ‘Sexual Ethics’.  Many students also elect to do their third-year dissertation in an interdisciplinary area.

For postgraduates

‘X’ teaching, and the collaborations and debates that this has fostered, have helped produce some of the finest recent research and contributed greatly to Cambridge's outstanding reputation for the application of modern approaches to the study of the ancient world. Many successful Ph.D. thesis projects have been directly inspired by it, and many others have reflected its influence. The Faculty is exceptional in having a large number of its members working on interdisciplinary topics (many of them with a ‘reception’ angle) at any one time.

Who are we?

Initiated by John Henderson and Geoffrey Lloyd in the 1980s, the 'X' Caucus has embraced a broad cross-section of internationally distinguished scholars known for their interdisciplinary interests. These include Rebecca Flemming, Simon Goldhill, Pat Easterling, Richard Hunter, Robin Osborne, Robert Wardy and James Warren.

More detailed information on the interdisciplinary interests of some of the caucus’ current members follows

Simon Goldhill  is Professor of Greek Literature and Culture, and has been involved in the interdisciplinary teaching of the X caucus from its inception.  He has directed the courses on ‘Rhetoric’, ‘Erotics’, ‘Cultural Identity’, ‘Sexual Ethics’, and currently on ‘Prostitutes and Saints’.  He publishes on all aspects of ancient drama and literature: his work on theatre brings together cultural history, politics, and literary criticism; his work on erotic literature brings together history of medicine, history of sexuality and narrative studies.  He has published extensively on the role and effects of classics in the modern world - from Erasmus to Richard Strauss - in his book Who Needs Greek?  And his most recent book Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity looks at nineteenth-century art, opera and fiction to explore the Victorians’ engagement with the classical past in a fully interdisciplinary way. Currently, Simon Goldhill is director of CRASSH, the Cambridge Research Centre in Arts, Social Sciences and the Humanities, which is dedicated to interdisciplinary research. He is also chair of the European Research Council’s panel on interdisciplinary research.  He has supervised PhDs on a range of interdisciplinary topics including: Modern French Thought and the Classics, Deception in Classical Greece, The Image of Ancient Cities in Nineteenth-Century Opera, Suicide in Greek Culture, Greek Athletics in Roman Culture. 

Robin Osborne regularly works on historical issues to which art and other aspects of material culture can contribute to our understanding.  These have included questions of the interpretation of settlement patterns and particular building types (so his work on Attica in Demos: the discovery of Classical Atticka, and on the Greek countryside more generally in Classical Landscape with Figures, and his papers on rural towers), issues of the contextual interpretation of pots and sculpture (in papers on herms, pots deployed in burial, the Parthenon sculptures etc., and more generally in Archaic and Classical Greek Art), and attempts to understand the significance of iconographic choices on pots or the theology of temple sculptures.  He directed an interdiscplinary research project investigating change in Athenian culture at the end of the fifth century, leading to two edited collections, Rethinking Revolution and Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution. His most recent book, The History Written on the Classical Greek Body (CUP 2011) is concerned with the different ways in which words and image classify the world, and classify the human body in particular. It is a product of his involvement in a Leverhulme research project Changing Beliefs of the Human Body from the Palaeolithic to Modern Medical Anthropology.  He has lectured for a number of X courses and helped run the X courses on ‘Death’ and ‘Gods and Idols’.

Richard Hunter is Regius Professor of Greek and works across the whole range of Greek and Latin literary culture. He has particular interests in the ancient reception of classical literature, whether that be the reception of Hellenistic literature at Rome (e.g. The Shadow of Callimachus, Cambridge 2006), ancient traditions of literary criticism (e.g. Critical Moments in Classical Literature, Cambridge 2009), or the reception of Plato in later Greek literature (e.g. Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature, Cambridge 2012). His work draws on, and helps draw together, the study of ancient literature, philosophy and language. He has supervised graduate work on the later reception of ancient literature, on ancient theatrical history, and on the development of the language of criticism. He has lectured for a number of X courses and was one of the original organisers of the X course on Death.

Caroline Vout works on ancient literature and visual culture and is interested in how bringing them together opens up new inroads into the study of the ancient world.  Though predominantly a Romanist, Carrie has written on Greek art, Winckelmann and the eighteenth century, and contemporary sculpture.  She was also the curator of the 2006 exhibition, 'Antinous: the Face of the Antique', at the Henry Moore Institute, consultant to the Palaces Commission in Hampton Court's re-display of Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar and more recently, co-investigator on the AHRC-funded project, Greece and Rome at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Her latest book, The Hills of Rome: Signature of an Eternal City (CUP 2012) embraces evidence from Varro to Nathaniel Hawthorne, early maps,  Renaissance paintings and nineteenth-century engravings.  She is supervising graduates working on ancient art and its reception and is co-convenor of the part II course ‘Prostitutes and Saints’. Before that, she co-taught the X course on ‘Death’.

• The Caucuses
  • A Caucus (Literature)
  • B Caucus (Philosophy)
  • C Caucus (History)
  • D Caucus (Art and Archaeology)
  • E Caucus (Linguistics)
  • X Caucus (Interdisciplinary)

• Home
• Contact
• RSS Feeds
• News
• Sitemap
• Accessibility
• T & C