Dr Astrid Voigt

Professional biography

My research focusses on Greek and Roman epic poetry but I have also worked on Greek tragedy. In my doctoral thesis, I examined how the narrative presentation of female lament in Greek and Roman epic poetry interacts with the social practice of burial in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and the ethical discourse on the emotion of grief in Hellenistic philosophy. In my MSt thesis, ‘Voices of tragic women in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, I compared Niobe, Ino and Andromeda in the poem to what we know about these characters from Greek and Roman tragic fragments. In my undergraduate thesis, I worked on the translation of Sophocles’ Antigone by Friedrich Hölderlin, a German poet of the Romantic era. This was based on work that I did as Assistant Literary Manager with the State Theatre in Düsseldorf (Germany) on their stage production of Sophocles’ tragedy in Hölderlin’s translation. More recently, I have co-edited a volume of conference papers on Flavian Epic Interactions and published two articles on Statius’ Thebaid.

Publications

The power of the grieving mind: Female lamentation in Statius' Thebaid, Illinois Classical Studies, vol. 41.1 (2016), 59-84.

The intertextual matrix of Statius' Thebaid 11.315-23 Dictynna 12 (2015) (online)

Manuwald, Gesine; Voigt, Astrid: ‘Flavian epic interactions’, in Gesine Manuwald and Astrid Voigt (eds.), Flavian Epic Interactions. Trends in Classics. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1-9. (2013)

Manuwald, Gesine; Voigt, Astrid (eds.), Flavian Epic Interactions. Trends in Classics. Berlin: De Gruyter. (2013)

Review of Fitzgerald, William (2013): How to Read a Latin Poem. If You Can’t Read Latin Yet. Oxford: Oxford University. Museum Helveticum 70.2 (2013), 239.

Review of Ulf, Christoph; Rollinger, Robert (eds.) (2002): Geschlechter – Frauen – Fremde Ethnien. In antiker Ethnographie, Theorie und Realität. Innsbruck: Studienverlag; and Brulé, Pierre (2003): Women of Ancient Greece, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Journal of Hellenic Studies 125 (2005), 183-5.

Review of Rehm, Rush (2002): The Play of Space. Spatial transformation in Greek tragedy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gnomon 76.8 (2004), 701-2.

Review of Foley, Helene P. (2001): Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. International Journal of the Classical Tradition 10 (2004), 113-15.

Review of Hall, E., Macintosh, F., Taplin, O. (eds.) (2000): Medea in Performance. 1500-2000, Oxford: Legenda; and Glaser, H. A. (2001): Medea oder Frauenehre, Kindsmord, Emanzipation. Zur Geschichte eines Mythos, Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Journal of Hellenic Studies 123 (2003), 263-5.

Conference and Seminar Papers

Intertextuality as a poetic device: an example from Roman epic poetry (2014)
Talk at the Associate Lecturer Research and Scholarship Group
Organized by Dr Sara Clayson, The Open University in the West Midlands

Tantum animi luctusque valent (Theb. 12.237): Female lament and the redefinition of grief in Statius’ Thebaid (2012)
Paper at Flavian Epic Network Conference: Flavian Epic and the World of ideas
Organized by Mariusz Zagórski, Institute of Classical Studies, University of Warsaw

Female Monsters – Monstrous Females. The Harpies in Book 3 of Virgil’s Aeneid (2004)
Paper at Seminar: Monsters
Organized by Dr Rebecca Armstrong, Balliol College, Oxford

Futures (2004)
Sub-faculty Seminar of Classical Languages and Literature (Organizor)
In collaboration with Prof Philip Hardie, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Feminism and Gender Studies (2002-2004)
Session on Seminar on Research Techniques in Classical Literature (Chair)
Faculty of Classics, Oxford

Plato’s critique of Homer and the representation of the female lament in epic (2002)
Paper at CA/CAS Conference in Edinburgh

Speech, violence, and gender in the tale of Philomela, Procne and Tereus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1999)
Paper at Conference: The voices of Roman women
St Hugh’s College, Oxford

As member of the Department of Classical Studies at the Open University, I teach on Classical Latin: the language of ancient Rome (A276) and Greek and Roman myth: stories and histories (A350). During module production, I was Assessment Lead for A350 and am now Deputy Module Team Chair as well as Lead Cluster Manager. I also take joint responsibility for managing the tuition of Discovering the arts and humanities A111 in the West Midlands.

Outside the Open University, I taught Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at the Universities of Cologne, Oxford and London and spent a year teaching Greek, Latin and Classical Civilization at a Secondary School in Birmingham.

I was awarded a Senior Fellowship with the Higher Education Academy in 2020.

In the context of my work at the Open University, I have also become interested in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and have worked with colleagues on a number of projects, including on

• Tuition attendance in the Arts & Humanities:
  Investigating tutorial attendance on synchronous face-to-face and online classroom events on Arts modules | FASSTEST
  Investigating tuition attendance in Arts & Humanities: Stage 2 | FASSTEST)
• Diversifying assessment:
  Diversifying End of Module Assessment Project Options on a Level 3 Classical Studies Module – A Pilot Study to Evaluate Pedagogic Strategies and Assess Benefits and Challenges | FASSTEST
  Diversifying End of Module Assessment project options on a Level 3 Classical Studies module - Benefits and Challenges for students and lecturers | FASSTEST).

Since 2021, I am the Scholarship Lead for the School of Arts & Humanities at the Open University, supporting colleagues with projects on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for The Open University’s Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – FASSTEST.

‘My hair started to hiss.’ Meditations on the myth of Medusa (2014)
Talk at local charity event
Organized by Coustis, Hair and Beauty, Alcester Road South, Kings Heath, Birmingham

Visualizing Tragedy: Significant Stage Action in Sophokles’ Philoktetes (2003)
Paper at Teacher Conference
Oriel College, Oxford