Unveiling the Iron Curtain

Last week I was in Prague, visiting my Czech colleagues and continuing our collaboration into Cold War Classics. This time I was let loose on the wonderful Theatre Studies students of Charles University, giving two lectures: one about Classical Reception Studies and the goals of the Brave New Classics project; and one about the reception of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata from the 1930s to 1950s by the theatre makers who were to become after WW2 the celebrated Theatre Workshop.

This was a great chance to share my developing research into “Red Antiquity” and to learn from the responses of my Czech colleagues. Drs. Jakub Čechvala, Martin Pšenička, Alena Sarkissian and me presented our international research project “Cold War Classics” at a round table public event in a room in Prague Municipal Library. The team also includes Fiona Macintosh and Claire Kenward from Oxford University’s APGRD, but they were unable to join us on this occasion. The project has obvious synergies with Brave New Classics, so I’ll be sure to keep people posted here on how the project progresses.