About the Book
This handbook explores the ways in which histories of colonialism and postcolonial thought and theory cast light on our understanding of the ancient Mediterranean world and the discipline of Classics, utilizing a wide body of case studies and providing avenues for future research and discussion.
It brings together chapters by a wide, international, and intersectional range of scholars coming from a variety of backgrounds and sub-disciplinary perspectives, and from across the chronological and geographical scope of Classics. Chapters cover the state of current research into ancient Mediterranean and South, Central, and West Asian histories. They provide case studies to illustrate both how postcolonial thought has already illuminated our understanding of the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond, as well as its potential for the future. Chapters also provide opportunities for reflection on the current state of the discipline. An introduction by the volume editors offers a survey of the development of postcolonial theory, its relationship to other bodies of theory, and its connections to Classics. Toward the end of the book, three scholars with different career and disciplinary perspectives provide short reflections on the themes of the volume and the directions of future research.
The Routledge Handbook of Classics, Colonialism, and Postcolonial Theory offers an impressive collection of current research and thought on the subject for students and scholars in classical studies understood in its larger sense as well as in related disciplines such as Archaeology, Ancient History, Imperial History and the History of Colonialism, Reception Studies, and Museum Studies. For anyone interested in classical antiquity, it provides an engaging introduction to a potentially bewildering, but ultimately vital and enriching, body of thought and theory.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction, Katherine Blouin and Ben Akrigg; 2. Edward Said's Orientalism: a reappraisal, Phiroze Vasunia; 3. Classics at the borderlands: decolonising with Gloria Anzaldúa, Mathura Umachandran; 4. Classics between epistemicides and hauntologies: a Caribbean reading, D. Padilla Peralta; 5. Placefulness and classical topoi in the writing of Ishion Hutchinson, Sasha-Mae Eccleston; 6. Indigenous writers of North America and Greco-Roman antiquity: postcolonialism without the post?, Craig Williams; 7. The ancient past in the historical present: postcolonial theory and ancient Indian history, Mekhola Gomes; 8. Subalternity in the Roman metropole, Amy Richlin; 9. Rape and race: intersectional perspectives on Aeschylus’ Suppliants, with a coda on Charles Mee’s Big Love, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz; 10. Resistant receptions: a postcolonial approach to receptions of Greek tragedy, Amy Pistone; 11. “Two-Eyed Seeing” and teaching classical literature, Aven McMaster; 12. Postcolonial feminisms and colonial encounters in the Hellenistic period, Patricia Eunji Kim; 13. Periplus, periplum, periphery: how to map classics from the edges, Grant Parker; 14. Time and the other Greeks, Dimitri Nakassis; 15. Our terms and theirs: some reflections on recent approaches to Greek religion, Kenneth W. Yu; 16. (Post-)colonialism and ancient magic, Korshi Dosoo; 17. Haec de Africa. Rome’s imagined Africa and the limits of fiction, Elena Giusti; 18. A colonialist trick of the eye: Valerius Maximus' Memorable Deeds and Sayings as a tool of imperial education, Liz Gloyn; 19. "They look white, but they're not”: nationality, race, and classical tradition in Brazil, Juliana Bastos Marques; 20. Res Diversissimas: a postcolonial reading of Hannibal’s reception, Dominic Machado; 21. “Perhaps it matters little to what race Terence belonged”: historicizing the life of Publius Terentius Afer, Denise Eileen McCoskey; 22. Alexander the Great studies and Hellenism in Uzbekistan: a postcolonial and decolonial discourse within a Central Asian archaeology stalled between post-Soviet myths, centre-periphery tensions, and non-recognition of Russian colonialism, Svetlana Gorshenina and Claude Rapin; 23. Locating Indo-Iranian borderlands between Central Asia and South Asia: a reading of the past connected history (third century BCE to sixth century CE), Suchandra Ghosh; 24. “Ê Faraó!”: the reception of ancient Egypt in Brazilian carnival, Franziska Naether; 25. The long, winding, and bumpy road: seeing museum antiquities as colonial legavies, Elizabeth Marlowe; 26. Thucydides on colonialism and hegemonic discourse, Neville Morley; 27. Forgery as decolonisation: Constantine Simonides in Liverpool, Rachel Yuen-Collingridge; 28. Those who tell their stories never die: on being an 'Indigenous' Egyptian researcher in the current increasing 'local' inclusion turn, Heba Abd el Gawad; 29. Troubled archive: (de)coloniality and Egypt’s papyri, Usama Ali Gad; 30. The materiality of papyri and the decolonization of Papyrology, Myrto Malouta; 31. “Many strange and impossible views”: the curious career of Frederic Cope Whitehouse (1842-1911), Brendan Haug; 32. Teaching classics in South Africa—a hopeful act: reflections on a decolonising teaching experience, Amy L. Daniels; 33. Colonizing the past: the case of Argos in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Jonathan M. Hall; 34. Examinations at the founding of the University of Toronto: the place of classics in the institutionalisation of Canadian education, Alison Cleverley; 35. “The Ancient Romans conquered all Syria and Egypt”: encounters between Arabic and the Classics in the nineteenth century, Rachel Mairs; 36. Claiming authority: the Antiquities Act and the legacy of classical archaeology in America, Christine Johnston; 37. Where Next?, Hardeep Singh Dhindsa; 38. Where Next? 2: reflections on my struggle with theory, Shelley P. Haley; 39. Where Next? 3, Barbara Goff.
About the Author :
Katherine Blouin is a twelfth generation French settler born and raised in Québec City. She is currently Associate Professor of History and Classics at the University of Toronto and the lead editor of Everyday Orientalism. Her publications include Le conflit judéo-alexandrin de 38-41: l'identité juive à l'épreuve (2005), Triangular Landscapes: Environment, Society, and the State in the Nile Delta under Roman Rule (2014), as well as The Nile Delta: Histories from Antiquity to the Modern Period (editor, 2024). She is currently working on a book project entitled Inventing Alexandria.
Ben Akrigg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Population and Economy in Classical Athens (CUP 2019) and co-editor of Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greek Comic Drama (CUP 2013).
