Oxford University Press Classics and Media Theory (Classical Presences)

Introducing a largely neglected area of existing interactions between Greco-Roman antiquity and media theory, this volume addresses the question of why interactions in this area matter and how they might be developed further. It aims not only to promote awareness of the presence of the classics in media theory but also to encourage more media attentiveness among scholars of Greece and Rome. By bringing together an international team of scholars with interdisciplinary expertise in areas ranging from classical literature and classical reception studies to art history, media theory and media history, film studies, philosophy, and cultural studies, the volume as a whole engages with numerous aspects of 'classical' Greece and Rome revolving around issues of philosophy, cultural history, literature, aesthetics, and epistemology. Each chapter provides its own definition of what constitutes mediality and how it operates, constructs different genealogies of the concept of the medium, and engages with emergent fields within media studies that range from cultural techniques to media archaeology, diagrammatology, and intermediality. By seeking to foreground the persistency of Greco-Roman paradigms across the different strands of media theory the volume persuasively calls for a closer consideration of the conceptual underpinnings of the cultural practices around the transformation of ancient Greece and Rome into 'classics.' About the Author Pantelis Michelakis is Reader in Classics at the University of Bristol. He is the author of Greek Tragedy on Screen (OUP, 2013), Euripides: Iphigenia at Aulis (Duckworth, 2006), and Achilles in Greek Tragedy (CUP, 2002), and has also co-edited three volumes of essays: The Ancient World in Silent Cinema (with Maria Wyke; CUP, 2013), Agamemnon in Performance, 458 BC to AD 2004 (with Fiona Macintosh, Edith Hall, and Oliver Taplin; OUP, 2005), and Homer, Tragedy and Beyond: Essays in Honour of P. E. Easterling (with Felix Budelmann; Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 2001). He has published widely on Greek literature, Greek theatre, and the broader reception of classical antiquity.