Dr Astrid Voigt

Professional biography

My research specialism is in Greek and Roman epic poetry but I have also worked on Greek tragedy. In my undergraduate thesis, I examined the translation of Friedrich Hölderlin, a German Romantic poet, of Sophocles’ Antigone. This was based on work that I did as Assistant Literary Manager with the State Theatre in Düsseldorf (Germany) which staged a production of Sophocles’ tragedy in Hölderlin’s translation. In my M.St. 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 doctoral thesis, submitted to Oxford University in 2004, 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. 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

I taught Classics, including both Greek and Latin Languages and Literature, at the Universities of Cologne, Oxford and London and also spent a year teaching Greek, Latin and Classical Civilization at a Secondary School in Birmingham. I joined the Open University in 2010 as an Associate Lecturer. In this role, I taught Myth in the Greek and Roman worlds (A330) and The Arts past and present (AA100). In my role as Staff Tutor and Lecturer in Classical Studies, I am a member of the A330 Module Team and, as a Cluster Manager, I am responsible for managing the tuition of Discovering the arts and humanities A111 J in the West Midlands and of A330 in the whole of the UK. As Assessment Lead and Block Convenor, I am also a member of the production team for the remake of A330 and am working with Staff Tutor colleagues on a scholarship project on student attendance at the tuition we offer on Arts modules.

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

‘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