Staff Profile:Dr Susanne Turner

Name::

Susanne Turner

Position / Job Title:

British Academy Research Fellow;

Responsibilities:

Library Rep

Areas of Interest:

Broadly speaking, the main focus of my research is on ancient art and its viewers: I'm interested in thinking about how different types of viewer might viewer the same object, image or building differently, and what sort of factors affect engagement and/or interpretation of visual images and monuments. As an extension of this, I'm also interested in the modern viewer and the reception of the ancient world.

I am working on two projects at the moment. The first is the publication of my doctoral thesis, "Classical Attic Grave Stelai: Gender, Death and the Viewer", which rethinks the stelai from the perspective of the viewer, focusing on their function as funerary and commemorative monuments rather than as status symbols. The second project, 'Viewing the Divine', explores viewing in the context of the Greek temple. I'm interested in using a religious and ritual frame to think about engagements with the gods (and their stories, that is, their myths and heroes) in the archaic and classical temples, as well as looking at the gods as they are exported from the temple itself (votives, coins, gems etc).

I'm also a member of the Council of the Hellenic Society.

Research groups / Centres:

Art, Religion, Society

Publications:

2008 "'Only Spartan women give birth to real men': Zack Snyder's 300 and the reception of the male nude", in D. Lowe & K. Shahabudin (eds.), Classics for All: Reworking Antiquity in Mass Culture, Cambridge (Cambridge Scholars Publishing): 128-149

2007a "Grave issues in classical Athens", Omnibus 54: 30-33

2007b "Lines of sight: an encounter with a classical Attic grave stele", Archaeological Review from Cambridge 22.1: 96-106

2006 "Looking sex in the 'I': the satyr's gaze", Archaeological Review from Cambridge 21.2: 96-113