Three Papers in Search of a Body

A workshop on the afterlife of the classical body organized by Alastair Blanshard (Sydney)

11:00-12:00
Brooke Holmes (Princeton University)
“Current Trends in the Study of the Classical Body”

12:00-1:00
Elizabeth Hale (University of New England)
“Thundering and Thrashing: Masculinity and Passion in the Victorian Classics Classroom”
This paper focuses on passages from nineteenth-century sources (mainly school stories) which show passions erupting in the classics classroom, and consider ways in which these passionate moments (violent, emotional, or other) reveal the roles of classics instruction in constructing or reinforcing ideas about masculinity for boys.  These ways may include performance of rigour/vigour/aggression, but also effeminacy, sadomasochism, eroticism and desire.

1:00-1:45
Lunch

1:45-2:45

Marguerite Johnson (Newcastle)
“‘The Dying Gaul’ Dies Again, and Again – Art and Colonialism in the Pacific”
This paper, part of a broader project on representations of Australasian Indigeneity through the lens of Neo-Classicism, discusses the Hellenistic/Roman sculpture, ‘The Dying Gail’ and its reproduction in two artworks pertaining to the colonial Pacific. The first is its use by the anonymous artist of the First Fleet, the Port Jackson Painter (fl. 1788-1797), in the study entitled ‘A Native Wounded while asleep.’ In contrast, the second, an oil painting by Johan Zoffany, ‘The Death of Cook’ (c. 1795), depicts Captain James Cook in the same pose.