Edith Hall
Professor at the Classics Department and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London.
Her original specialism was in ancient Greek literature, but she enjoys putting the pleasure as well as the rigour into all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman history, society, and thought.
She has published more than twenty books, broadcasts frequently on radio and television, works as consultant with professional theatres, lectures all over the world, and publishes widely in academic and mainstream journals and newspapers.
She is a world leader in the study of ethnicity, class and gender in ancient sources, of ancient theatre, and of the continuing instrumentality of ancient ideas in world culture since the Renaissance.
Edith Hall has held posts at Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Reading and Royal Holloway, and visiting positions at Notre Dame, Swarthmore, Northwestern, Leiden, and Erfurt.
LECTURE
A Short History of Gender and Revenge: or, why are the Erinyes Female?
In a world facing reciprocal violence and escalations of conflict between citizens, nation-states, and ethnic or religious groups, it has never been more important to examine the cultural, social and intellectual roots in antiquity of the way we think about revenge. This lecture asks why vindictiveness is so often associated in literature and theatre with femininity, by tracing the figure of the Erinys or Fury back to Hesiod and Greek tragedy and asking how these texts can help us unpack some of the complexities of the concept of revenge in our own day as well.