Staff Profile:

Name:

Dr David Carter

Job Title:

Senior Lecturer, Director of teaching & Learning, School of Humanities

Responsibilities:

Director of Teaching and Learning in the School of Humanities

Office Hours: Tuesdays 12-1pm

Areas of Interest:

My research interests are in Greek drama and Greek political thought. A great deal (though not all) of my research to date is inspired by an enthusiasm for political drama in all its forms. (My favourite TV show is The West Wing, my favourite modern playwright is David Hare, and my favourite opera is John Adam's Nixon in China.) A central question in the study of Greek drama - essentially the question behind each of my two books - is: in what ways is Greek tragedy a political art form?

Fairly early in my work on tragedy and politics I came up against the problem of the Greeks and (human/natural or legal) rights: is it reasonable to discuss ancient Greek ideas of justice in terms of rights, or was the concept foreign to them? Most of my current work is on this topic, and will result in a book scheduled for publication by Oxford University Press in 2014.

Research groups / Centres:

In the Department of Classics: The Classical Tradition and Reception Studies; Language, Text and Power. I am a member of the University of Reading's Centre for Political Theory and the University of Nottingham's Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception. I am a founder member and co-director of an international network, based at Reading, on The Legacy of Greek Political Thought.

Other Activities:

I am a keen supporter of Classics teaching in secondary schools and I am happy to give talks to sixth formers, especially the state sector. In a previous life I was Head of Classics in a large boys comprehensive school, and for two years I was chair of the Classical Civilisation committee of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers. I am also a member of Council for the Classical Association.

Publications:

Books

• The Politics of Greek Tragedy (Exeter 2007)
  shortlisted in 2008 for the Runciman Award of the Anglo-Hellenic League
• (as editor) Why Athens? A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics (Oxford 2011)

Papers in journals

• 'The demos in Greek tragedy', Cambridge Classical Journal (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society) 56 (2010) 47-94
• 'The Co-operative Temper: a third dramatic role in Sophoclean tragedy', Mnemosyne 58 (2005) 161-82
• 'Was Attic tragedy democratic?' Polis 21 (2004) 1-25

Papers in edited volumes

• 'Plato, drama, and rhetoric', in D.M. Carter (ed.) Why Athens? A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics (Oxford 2011) 45-67
• 'Antigone', in A. Markantonatos (ed.) Brill's Companion to Sophocles (Leiden, forthcoming)
• 'Could a Greek oath guarantee a claim-right: oaths, contracts and the structure of obligation in Greek society', in A.H. Sommerstein and J. Fletcher (eds), Horkos: The Oath in Greek Society (Exeter 2007) 60-72
• 'At home, round here, out there: the city and tragic space', in I. Sluiter and R.M. Rosen (eds), City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity. Mnemosyne Suppl. 279 (Leiden 2006) 138-72
• 'Citizen Attribute, Negative Right: a conceptual difference between ancient and modern ideas of Freedom of Speech' in I. Sluiter and R.M. Rosen (eds), Free Speech in Classical Antiquity. Mnemosyne Suppl. 254 (Leiden 2004) 197-220