Staff Profile:Professor Barbara Goff

Name:

Professor Barbara Goff

Job Title:

Professor

Responsibilities:

Departmental Director of Teaching and Learning

I did my undergraduate work at King's College Cambridge, where I was later a Junior Research Fellow, and I pursued my postgraduate work at the University of California.  I have taught at different institutions including the University of Texas at Austin.  Currently I teach Ancient Drama' (CL2DR) and 'Ancient Persuasion' (CL2PE).

Areas of Interest:

Greek Tragedy and its reception; women in antiquity; postcolonial classics; reception of Greek political thought

Research groups / Centres:

I am a member of the Ancient Literature and Classical Tradition and Reception groups in the Department.

I am a member of the Ancient and Modern Imperialisms Network, and the Legacy of Greek Political Thought Network, both based in Reading, and of the Classical Reception Studies Network, based at the Open University.

I am on the international editorial boards of  The Classical Receptions Journal (OUP) and of Elektra (University of Patras).

Publications:

My recent major publications include Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone and Dramas of the African Diaspora (Oxford University Press 2007).  This book, which was co-written with Dr Michael Simpson of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London, is the first book-length study of African and African-American dramas based on Oedipus and Antigone (for more information please click Here).

In 2009 I published Euripides: Trojan Women (Duckworth 2009),which unites my interests in tragedy, women, ritual, and colonial power.

I have most recently published

Thinking the Olympics: the classical tradition and the modern Games

 (London: Bloomsbury/Bristol Classical Press, 2011).  This collection, co-edited with Michael Simpson, is the first to focus on tradition as an integral feature of the ancient and modern Olympic Games.  The essays derive from classics, art history, cultural history, and comparative literature, and address topics as diverse as praise poetry, neoclassical painting and architecture, the athletic body, and contemporary advertising.

Current major projects comprise a study of the uses of Latin and the classics in the education of Africans under British colonial rule, and a study of classics in the discourse of the British Left, undertaken with Dr Michael Simpson.  I shall be delighted to supervise PhD dissertations on any aspect of tragedy and its reception, women in antiquity, or postcolonial classics.

See also my contribution to a Guide to Publishing and the Early Career Classicist.