Dr Sophie Bocksberger

Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature. 

I studied at the University of Lausanne (graduating in Classics, Old French, and English Literature), before coming to Oxford for my doctorate. I have been working there as a lecturer since 2016. 

I had the chance to be an academic visitor at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, the Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies of Australia (University of Sydney), and the Instituts für Religionswissenschaft (Freie Universität, Berlin).

Teaching:

I give tutorials on all the Greek literature papers on offer. I also teach unseens and prose composition and reading classes on the set texts. I also supervise graduate students on early Greek hexameter poetry and Greek tragedy, but I would welcome other literary options such as lyric and reception.

Research:

My research interests focus on Greek culture of the archaic and classical periods, and specifically on the interaction between literature and art with religion, politics, and the historical context. I strive to bring all those elements together in order to shed light on literary texts and Greek concepts. 

I have written a book on the Archaic and Classical Reception of Telamonian Ajax in which I have systematically traced the evolution of his myth from the late 8th century to the 4th century BCE in literature and art.

Currently, I am working on a monograph that seeks to establish an emic definition of ancient Greek dance (i.e., understand the phenomenon of dance as it manifested itself in archaic and classical Greece) through a careful analysis of ancient dance terminology. I am also interested in exploring the impact ancient dance had on the intellectual history of the fifth century.

Publications:

2021a                    Telamonian Ajax: His Myth in Archaic and Classical Greece (Oxford) 

2021b                    ‘Dancing Little Bears’, in I. Salvo and T. Scheer (eds) Religion and Education in the Ancient Greek World (Mohr Siebeck).

2021c                    ‘Narrative Dance: imitating ēthos and pathos through schēmata’, in L. Gianvittorio and K. Schlapbach (eds) Choreonarratives (Brill). 

2019                      ‘Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers’ in the special issue Experiential Analogies: Technology deployed for Historical Studies, edited by Anna Foka, Jonathan Westin and Adam Chapman, (Umea) (with Dr Helen Slaney and Dr Anna Foka).        

2017a                    ‘Dance as Silent Poetry, Poetry as Speaking Dance: the Poetics of Orchesis’, in Choreutika: Performing dance in archaic and classical Greece, ed. L. Gianvittorio, BQUCC, pp. 159-74.

2017b                    ‘5266. Sophocles, Philoctetes 104–7, 109–32, 151, 155–81’, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 81, Oxford, 2017, pp. 52-7 (with C. Meccariello).           

2016                      Signed preface and scientific expertise of La Batrachomyomachie, a new translation by Bertrand Schmidt, Hélice Hélas, Vevey, 2016. 

2012                      ‘La scène du meurtre d'Egisthe dans l'Electre de Sophocle’, Lexis 30, 2012, pp. 261-7.

2011                      ‘La Sappho du Rhône’, Desmos, Paris, 2011.