Hello and welcome to Regional Classics, a podcast from the University of Oxford,
which reflects and celebrates the diverse voices of Oxford classicists past and present from different parts of the UK.
All the while creating thought provoking conversations, breaking down barriers and showing that if you want to study the ancient world,
any aspects politics, history, arts, science, literature, culture and much more then you can.
Oxford classicists do not and need not come from only a narrow cross-section of society.
And in this series of interviews, I'm speaking to current Oxford classicists from across the British Isles.
Firstly, I'm joined by Leo Kershaw, a DPhil student researching decolonial approaches to receptions of Greek tragedy,
especially Euripides Medea, as performed in South Africa since 1800.
He's now studying at Balliol College and previously did his undergraduate degree at Lady Margaret Hall.
Prior to that, he was brought up in Hertfordshire and North London,
and here he tells us about his own first experiences of learning about the ancient world.
So I was homeschooled up until GCSEs, which I mostly taught myself,
and we did most of the standard subjects English, history, maths, science, all of that.
But in my spare time, I did a lot of reading.
That was my main hobby, and that's where I really got into mythology and I would do little projects by myself on ancient Greek and Rome,
where I would look up Latin sayings and try to figure out what they meant and how the English equated to the Latin.
But I didn't have any formal teaching in classics, and I didn't have any Latin or Greek until I came to university.
My sixth form didn't offer either language,
although I was really lucky to have a great classical civilisation A-level teacher who taught me a little bit of Latin on the side,
but nowhere near enough to apply for a course here for which I'd already have either language.
And how do you think that having taught yourself, GCSEs, which is a fantastic achievement and being home,
educated, prepared you as well for Oxford, both the course and also the style of studying at university?
I think it gave me a lot of drive. I was always very self-motivated.
So transitioning to university wasn't too difficult on the academic side as I was very used to guiding my own studies.
There is a step up from school, obviously, but for me, it wasn't a totally new thing.
Not having information delivered to me and being told, Here, go read this and then figure out how to write an essay on that,
and that was something I was quite used to and adapted to quite comfortably. And it's one of the ways I really like working.
So I think in a in a way that did help. Aimee Cousins is a second year classicist at Magdalen College,
and here she talks about what it was like coming to Oxford from a state comprehensive school in King's Lynn in West Norfolk.
I think because I also did like the classics bridging programme like a month before term started.
So like September of 2020, I got to grips a bit with the city and like where things are,
you know how long it takes to get from A to B and that type of thing.
So I think when I came in October, it was mostly just getting to know my college, which I really enjoyed.
Magdalen has the deer park and it gets really big and pretty, so it's been nice.
I think doing classics like you don't feel like you're immediately kind of in the deep end.
Obviously, it's intense with the language lessons every day, but you still it still kind of feels like you're being eased into it a bit.
So it's not too bad like I really enjoyed my first term.
Yeah, I think that it was kind of a really good way to get into the course.
Alice Main is a classical archaeology and ancient history student at Lincoln College.
And she's originally from the Isle of Man, situated in the Irish Sea, equidistant between England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Here, she tells us more about coming from the Isle of Man and the sorts of opportunities that she had to engage with the ancient world.
Well, I wouldn't say that we studied classics at all.
It's not really offered on the island. Most of what I did was teither myself or with my pet, sort of with my parents going on trips to England,
to look at hill forts and Hadrian's Wall and things like that of the island and.
We do have an awful lot of our archaeology of the island, but it's not classical archaeology.
It's more Iron Age Neolithic sort of thing, which is very interesting.
So that was another very enjoyable aspect to my childhood,
sort of wandering around all these different ship burials and things I wish I actually started doing again over lockdown.
Coming back to my school. We mainly did 20th century history.
So my only real interaction with classics was probably through my extended project,
which is a five thousand word essay on a subject of your choice - you have to do your own research
and think of your own question and you're sort of sent away with with help from a teacher.
And you have to write this essay. So I decided to do Roman Britain because at that time, that was what I had the most experience of.
If you could call it experience with my own, nosing around or guidebooks and websites meant so much.
And how do you think that your background has impacted your studies at Oxford so far?
Lots of people haven't heard of the Isle, let's put it that way, which I wouldn't hold it against them.
It is quite small, but my tutors and the lectures that I interact with have really been wonderful.
I don't feel I can say it now with hindsight that all of the worries I had about not fitting
in because of something I haven't done classics Greek and Latin are pretty much unfounded,
I would say. Here's Amy talking further about her educational background: for GCSE
My school was like, obviously really good because I was able to do Latin and ancient history,
but for my A-levels, because I was the only one who wanted to do anything like that, it obviously didn't run.
And the nearest schools to me that, like offered A-levels in classics were like 40-50 miles away.
So there was no chance that I was going to be able to do it for A-levels.
So I kind of had to choose other things that I like.
I did maths, which I did not enjoy,
but it was just like basically a filler subject because I was good at it and I couldn't do what I actually wanted to do,
I kind of had to like, keep up in my own time. And like, I didn't really mind that I was just reading stuff that I enjoyed.
But like, I think it would have been better, obviously, if I'd have been able to do it at school.
I just like it wasn't really, I suppose, geographically possible.
And any barriers, I think I was intimidated by the fact that I didn't have Latin or Greek,
I had a small taste of ancient Greek when I came to a summer school hosted in Oxford called Uniq,
which is aimed at state school students that have given me about five five hours worth of Greek.
But it was nerve-racking, and I didn't have a modern foreign language for A-level either.
I dropped French GCSE, so that was probably the most challenging aspect.
I also found applying quite daunting because I have anxiety and the idea of having interviews, it's terrifying.
But everyone in my interviews is actually really friendly, and I think there's quite there's kind of a myth surrounding Oxford interview that
interviewers are there to intimidate you and ask you impossible questions.
And at least I found that that wasn't the case at all. They were just trying to.
They tried to make me comfortable, first of all.
And they just wanted to have a conversation with me and see how I would volley with them back and forth.
So, yeah, I think all of my preconceptions about how intimidating people kind of shattered when I actually did apply.
Translations of ancient texts of the primary sources are such a great way and a great way to say into the past and understanding
that literature which otherwise isn't necessarily accessible to us if we've not studied Latin or Greek or had those opportunities.
And yeah, I think sometimes it is forgotten about or there's almost a perceived view that reading in translation isn't the real deal,
it's not the real thing. So it's not worthwhile. But what would you say to that?
Oh, I think it's ridiculous and say, Oh, well, it isn't.
It is ridiculous.
You probably get some extra depth in reading from the original text, but I wouldn't know, because that's not something I'm able to do at the moment.
And I say, probably I don't need anything really wrong with reading texts and translation.
I mean, if you have a good commentary, which often comes very helpfully with translations, it would be quite difficult to go wrong.
If you can call, it goes wrong, you're just at the end of the day, you're just interpreting the information someone else is giving you.
I think at the time,
it's probably the only interaction I had with texts and translation was probably the Iliad and the Odyssey more specifically here.
Robert Fagles' Edition I really loved and then coming up to Oxford and encountering Herodotus and Thucydides.
So, yeah, I think it would be you discounting a whole swathes of people who maybe don't have access to learning languages by,
say, by just rejecting the idea of text and translation. separately?
Aimee answered the same question. I think that there's something to kind of reading the original text.
You can never really get away from like it doing your own translation is as close to the original text as you can get.
Whereas if you if you're reading someone else's translation, then you're already kind of one step back from how the kind of author intended it to be.
So if you can read it yourself, you're really getting like as much of the richness as you can.
And obviously you can go back over it and every time you'll like, notice new things or like pick up on different kinds of nuances.
And so I feel like kind of it's like a skill that is so kind of integral to me that I feel like it should kind of it
should be on offer for more people like anyone who's kind of interested in classics should have the opportunity to do it,
rather than it being kind of focussed in specific pockets of the country or in specific kinds of schools.
I feel like it should definitely be like a lot more widely available.
I asked Leo to tell me one thing that he'd really loved about doing his classics degrees.
I love the chance to learn both ancient languages from scratch - Greek and Latin.
I didn't have much experience in languages at school, but then coming to university,
I realised that I really do love learning new languages and being able to learn Greek
and then Latin from scratch really encourage me to pick up more languages myself.
So I'm currently studying modern Greek Italian. I've gone back to French and I'm teaching myself Afrikaans at the moment.
Absolutely love that classics have given me a skill to be able to go off and study language by myself.
So that's definitely one thing kind of a nerdy answer, but that's one thing that I love about this degree.
And what was the second part of the question? Well, the second part was about your more relaxed experience,
but I just want to pick up actually on what you said about building skills and
certainly that familiarity with languages and being able to apply it to different,
including modern languages. And what are the other skills that you think your degree has given you so far?
So many, because we get a taste in so many different humanities disciplines, I think we pick up skills from all of them,
the kind of history and archaeological approaches to the given me and analytical skills that I have a taste at a level when I was doing history,
but really has deepened here at Oxford. Philosophy
I found so challenging,
but it really made me think about how we define things and how we explain things and how nuance can make such a big difference in interpreting.
That's been a brain exercise that I never experienced before,
and I didn't take any philosophy after the compulsory one because I found it so kind of overwhelming.
But it is something that I think has affected how I approach every other aspect of my studies.
And since we write so many essay for on average, you write about two a week and each essay 2000 words.
So I really gained the ability to organise my thoughts and put together coherent arguments and check for evidence,
check the facts yet for interpretation. I think it really has strengthened my writing abilities an awful lot since I left school.
I feel like you've really kind of build a whole different range of skills.
You're learning a language and you're also doing like we do a philosophy module.
So looking at that type of thing, and so you're doing some critical thinking and you know, through your essays,
you're reading all these different sources and taking in a lot of the information at quite like a fast pace.
And so you're building skills related to that.
When you look at the literature, there's like obviously like literary analysis and then you do like commentaries.
There's a lot going on, you can look at like material culture, so you can develop archaeological skills as well.
So like, I don't know, it's just a good all round subject.
I think, well, the generic ones with all Oxford courses, because this time management essay writing all of those useful things we'll say using computers.
It's made me a better typist in the basic sense, but probably on a more serious note.
Archaeology is brilliant for observational skills, so sort of looking at objects and interpreting what's in front of you.
And also with the ancient history aspect, analysing texts as well,
which is always useful skill to have if you want to go to any sort of humanities based professions like law, journalism.
But archaeology can be quite useful for other sort of more creative things like art and maybe even going into the sciences.
Perhaps because I'm encountering science based methods a bit more because as all people are probably prone to, ancient sources,
are very prone to exaggeration.
Sometimes archaeological sources aren't always what you expect them to be or aren't as helpful as you expect them to be.
So to use an example, completely away from written sources, this is very much archaeology.
I've recently been doing a lecture on Homeric archaeology looking at the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces, and there are some working theories.
It could be fire damage or earthquakes or attacks by another civilisation.
But unfortunately, when you look at the archaeological record at the destruction horizons,
which is what you call a sort of an element of a palace or an area that's been destroyed
in the archaeological record, an earthquake and attack by something else someone,
someone or something else and a fire all look very similar.
So you have to be quite careful if you're making assumptions using archaeology.
Yes, that's really interesting how neither, as you say,
discipline can necessarily be foolproof and that the combination of the two is in some ways perhaps the safest method of of historical investigation.
Classics, as we know, is a broad subject, and here Leo tells us just some of the areas that he's covered across multiple degrees at Oxford.
For my undergraduate course, I took all of the compulsory modules that everyone who does the classics course does.
But beyond that, I chose to specialise quite heavily in Greek tragedy and the reception of other Greek drama and Greek mythology for my undergrad.
I did my reception paper on. Actually, that was on and not in Greek tragedy at all.
It was on Ovidian myth of gender transformation and its reception in modern poetry.
One of my favourite aspects is looking at a collection of spoken poems by the non-binary rapper and poet Kae Tempest,
and I found that so fascinating as they have taken these myths that are told by a Roman poet and make and situated them in the modern day.
But beyond that,
I've done lots of work looking at how greek tragedy has been received since the romantic period so late 18th early 19th century onwards,
and that led me to do my master's in reception pretty much of Greek tragedy, Greek satyr play.
And that has led to me starting a Ph.D. on the reception of Euripides Medea, a great tragedy in South Africa over the last 200 years.
So there's definitely a strong continuation from what I did back at A-level at undergrad.
So what I'm doing now? How else do you feel that the ancient past has informed your understanding of the modern world?
I mean, we see it in all sorts of aspects of society.
I'm hesitant to say that we've seen it in like the founding of democracy structures and everything like that because, well, that's true.
It's kind of leads into the idea that with the foundation of so-called Western civilisation.
I don't think that's really the case. I think has a global influence, both positively and negatively.
We don't put too much emphasis on the positives that overlook the negative impact it's had on colonialism and upholding imperialist legacies.
But I do think that classics has an important role in helping unpick all of that and all these kind of discussions,
especially recently with so much attention brought to, you know, Black Lives Matter and kind of international scene.
I think that's enabled us to become very introspective and look at how our disciplines interact with that.
And I think there's a lot it can teach us about its role in that history and how we can advance from that.
I think it's an excellent answer. I think you've got really there to the heart of the problem in terms of trying to use the past,
but in the correct way, but use it as a lens to view how the party's been received.
It's constantly evolving. Isn't that I think how we view classics now is in that sentence.
We cannot escape ancient history.
We cannot escape how the past is affected us and how we can hope for the use that to learn and to and to build in the future.
But it's a very complex and nuanced thing, which, as as you said,
I don't know if you think there anymore of sort of pressing issues that face the discipline today.
And there are some places in which it's harder to study classics or a version of it because of how it's sort of perceived politically.
How do you think we can assure you enjoy classics in the future? Yeah, for sure.
I think that's actually one reason why I chose to study the reception of media in South Africa,
because that has such an inherent link to colonialism and white supremacism.
And over the last 30 or 40 years, we've really seen a change for the better, and it's become a lot more integrated, diverse and multicultural.
And I think it's a really exciting moment for how class is being approached internationally.
And we see voices who are previously subjugated, reclaiming the classics and turning into something that is empowering.
And I think that's so exciting and that's what I'd really like to see happen more with classics and onto a different and also complex question here.
As Aimee discusses how one barrier to studying classics can be the name itself.
I mean, every time I've kind of said that like, Oh, I'm doing classics,
people always think, I mean, like Charles Dickens and like the Bronte sisters and stuff.
So I don't know. For outsiders, it's maybe people who don't really know what it is in the first place.
It's a bit confusing, but I feel like it doesn't necessarily completely kind of encompass the whole discipline anymore.
Like I've heard the name ancient Mediterranean studies mentioned around and like I, I'm not really kind.
I feel like I'm not really in the position to kind of make a judgement on it,
but I feel like classics is perhaps not exactly the right way to describe it any more because it is a bit broader than just.
I feel like it focuses more on text and it is, you see, a lot broader than just the texts.
You know, there's a lot more to it. Than just some, just some plays and poetry, you know?
Throughout the regional Classics podcast, we have, of course, been breaking down myths and barriers.
So here are a couple of more myth busting examples for you.
Are there any other myths Alice that you think could be dispelled, about classics or about Oxford or about your experience so far?
I went to a comprehensive school, although we don't really have the same school system on the island, grammar schools and things like that.
So I was rather nervous when I came here that everyone probably went to some selective
or private school and which there's nothing wrong with that thinking wrong.
But I wasn't expecting Oxford to be as educational, say, educationally diverse as it is.
Yeah, I think the idea that Classics is an elite subject,
there are elements which makes it easier for people who have come from privileged backgrounds to apply for it to study.
But I don't think Classics itself is inherently elite. It's just as possible for someone to come and study Classics who hasn't studied it before,
who hasn't been to our private school, who doesn't know any ancient language.
And there are so many aspects of Classics that can appeal to people who haven't had any formal training in it.
Classics is still kind of all over the place from, I think, fairly recently.
Lizzo released a music video to her song rumours, which is it's kind of like Disney's Hercules, except with Lizzo and other artists.
And they embody pottery from ancient Greece and Greek goddess as a muse.
And I think that's such a cool way to kind of continue classics and make it more appealing to a modern audience.
And even if it's someone who you know,
isn't herself a classicist and we see all sorts of books coming out recently like Madeline Miller's Circe and son of Achilles Pat Barker,
all these books that are inspired by mythology and are catered towards a modern audience,
the teen audience, the young adult audience, and whatever way you became interested in classics inspired I'd like for me,
it was a kid's mythology and historical fiction books, and that's just as valid as someone who's been studying Latin since.
They were in year seven. Certainly.
And is there anything else that you would say, perhaps to your former self or to a student in a similar position,
either from home educated or at a state school not able to access classics?
Some advice that you would give them looking back? I would just say that if this is something that you want to go for it,
you don't necessarily or in any way have a disadvantage because of what background you're coming from.
If you've got the enthusiasm and the willingness to put the effort in and to learn you've got just a good chance that his chances,
any of getting in and having a brilliant time here, Oxford and on that note, this episode draws to a close.
And I want to say thank you to Leo,
Alice and Aimee for all of their contributions and their time in taking part in this episode of the Regional Classics podcast.
Thank you too for listening, and you can find out more information about classics at Oxford on our website,
as well as looking through all the previous episodes of this podcast available on Oxford Podcasts,
via the Classics at Oxford website and on Apple Podcasts too.