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 modern culture, but as emblematic of universal value, and Classicists studied, by their own reckoning, the peak of human achievement. The emergent field of Classical Reception Studies has challenged many of these assumptions. Scholars who wish not simply to study the ancient past but rather to study the study of the ancient past have asked, why Greece and Rome? Why no other culture? And what does this act of choosing ultimately reveal? Yet even as these questions have been formulated, the response inside modern Classics has been lukewarm at best. In this podcast, Shivaike Shah is joined by Luke Richardson, formerly postgraduate teaching assistant at University College London, who researches the intellectual impact of the ongoing obsession with Greece and Rome. They discuss the seeming inability of modern Classics to come to terms with essential questions about itself and the languages of Western supremacy it represents.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/khameleon-classics/classical-reception-a-failed-revolution