Wednesday 27th November, 3pm – 5pm. Bush House room SE 1.01.

This lecture by Prof. Efi Karakantza (University of Patras) will discuss how Antigone is plural, for with every retelling of the original, Sophoclean version of the myth, a new version of Antigone is created. The new version is sometimes closely and sometimes loosely connected to the source text. This talk focuses on two Antigones in dispossessed or occupied lands: a) Antigone in Ilias Venezis’s novel Exodus (1950), set in Nazi-occupied Greece (WWII), and b) Antigone in Adel Hakim’s acclaimed 2011 production of the Sophoclean Antigone for the National Theatre of Palestine (based in West Jerusalem), which toured Arabic and European countries and won the 2012 Critics Award for best foreign production in France. 

Part of the KCL Department of Classics Seminar Series, co-hosted by CHS. Please email chs@kcl.ac.uk to be added to the guestlist at Bush House reception.

Efimia Karakantza is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the University of Patras. She was trained at the University of Thessaloniki, University of Reading, UK, and the Centre Louis Gernet, Paris, and she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin. She has widely published on Homeric, lyric and dramatic poetry, as well as on approaches to ancient Greek myths. Her recent focus is on feminist and political readings of ancient Greek literature, mainly Greek tragedy (Sophocles in particular). Her book on Oedipus titled: ‘Who Am I? (Mis)Identity and the Polis in Oedipus Tyrannus (HSS 86, HUP 2020), explores issues of identity and citizenship in the ancient polis. Her book on Antigone (published in 2023 by Routledge in the series: Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World) explores the ancient legend in the classical texts, as well as its reception in contemporary critical thinking and the performing arts. She has recently submitted a co-edited volume titled Ancient Necropolitics: Maltreating the Living, Abusing the Dead in Ancient Greece, which is due to appear in early 2025 as a Mnemosyne Supplement issued by Brill.