Shivaike Shah - Podcast Details

Shows

Khameleon ClassicsThe Making of Khameleon Classics, with Shivaike ShahIn the final episode of Khameleon Classics, host Shivaike Shah and assistant producer Malin Hay look behind the scenes at the making of the show, and discuss how a project that was conceived as a five-episode miniseries on Medea ended up becoming thirty episodes covering everything from ancient Egypt to Reconstruction-era America and beyond.2023-01-2324 min

Khameleon ClassicsStatues Then and Now, with Verity PlattIn the last decade, public statues have become a focal point for debates about the remembrance and commemoration of history. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, Edward Colston in Bristol, and Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford: do statues of these figures remind us of their harmful legacies, or valorise them in spite of them? And how do our interpretations and misinterpretations of classical sculpture inform the style and significance of public statuary in the modern day? Shivaike Shah speaks to Verity Platt, Professor of Classics and History of Art at Cornell University, about what we get wrong about classical...2023-01-1631 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and Du Bois, with Mathias HansesW.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was one of the foremost thinkers and writers about race in the period directly after Reconstruction. He was also a professor of Classics who engaged closely with a number of Greek and Roman writers, including Cicero, Aristotle and Plato. Shivaike Shah speaks to Dr Mathias Hanses, Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University, about his characterisation of Du Bois as a ‘Black Cicero’. What light does Du Bois shed on Cicero’s relationship with race in orations like Pro Archia Poeta? And how does an acknowledgement of Du...2023-01-0927 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and the Reconstruction, with Jackie MurrayThroughout the Reconstruction era, from the end of the American Civil War in 1865 to the start of the Jim Crow era at the end of the nineteenth century, both Black activists and white supremacists used their classical education in service of their political ideals. Shivaike Shah talks to Jackie Murray, professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky, about the ways that writers engaged in dialogue with one another about the merits of Reconstruction, the status of classical education at this time, and the assumptions that such an education produced in its pupils about the inherent value of empire...2022-12-1921 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics Beyond Whiteness, with THM Gellar-Goad and Caitlin HinesWhat happens when, in the wake of worldwide upheaval, a Classics department decides to put into practice the principles of anti-racism and social justice in the classroom? Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is now the first department of Classics in the world to require coursework in critical race theory for all majors and minors. Shivaike Shah talks to the founding teachers, THM Gellar-Goad (Associate Professor at Wake Forest) and Caitlin Hines (Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati), about the impetus for the project, the impact it has had on the faculty, and the importance of destabilising assumptions...2022-12-1228 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and the Politics of Migration, with Demetra KasimisWhat can reading classical political texts teach us about our own politics? This is the question that Demetra Kasimis, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is answering with her work, which looks at democracy and its dilemmas in the context of Ancient Greece. Her article ‘Medea the Refugee’ places Medea’s status as an immigrant in the centre of her reading of the play. Shivaike and Demetra discuss the slipperiness of political definitions and terms, both in Ancient Greece and today, and reflect on the desire, constant across space and time, for dominant powers to define politi...2022-12-0536 min

Khameleon ClassicsLatin Poetry in the Caribbean, with John GilmoreThe role of Latin in Britain’s eighteenth-century Caribbean colonies was multifaceted. The ability to speak the language was a status symbol for the colonial elite, and Latin texts often served as attempted validations of the colonial project; for example, John Maynard wrote a lengthy Latin poem aiming to justify the slave trade in Barbados. But there was also the Jamaican poet Francis Williams, who achieved international fame as a writer of Latin verse and used his work to defend his right to be taken seriously as a Black poet. In this week’s episode, Dr John Gilmore of the Univ...2022-02-2131 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassical Reception: A Failed Revolution? with Luke RichardsonFor generations, the Classical discipline’s exclusive study of Greece and Rome went unquestioned, as did its position at the heart of the humanities. Greece and Rome’s literature, art and intellectual legacy were seen not only as formative to modern culture, but as emblematic of universal value, and Classicists studied, by their own reckoning, the peak of human achievement. The emergent field of Classical Reception Studies has challenged many of these assumptions. Scholars who wish not simply to study the ancient past but rather to study the study of the ancient past have asked, why Greece and Rome? Why no o...2022-02-1429 min

Khameleon ClassicsLiquid Antiquity, with Brooke HolmesWhen we imagine the curation of antiquities, especially classical antiquities, we usually think of preserving the past within museums and other cultural institutions. But we rarely ask what we are preserving, and why, and for whom. The language of the classical has value built into it, so what would it mean to take our relationship with ‘classical’ antiquity as itself an object of curation? And in rethinking how communities have taken shape around the valuation of antiquity, how might we recognise and sustain new communities around the critical and creative engagement with the ancient Greco-Roman world? In this episode, Shivaike Shah...2022-02-0730 min

Khameleon ClassicsMedea and Twentieth-Century Feminism, with Chiara SulprizioWhat makes Medea a perennial figure of feminist fascination? Why was the mythological heroine marked as an icon of defiance in feminist movements throughout the twentieth century? In this week’s episode, we hear from Dr Chiara Sulprizio, a Senior Lecturer in Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. Shivaike Shah and Dr Sulprizio explore how Medea’s story of rage and otherness fed into many of the issues that were paramount to the feminist movements of the twentieth century, and consider how her unspeakable act of violence and her rejection of the roles of traditional wife and mother made them...2022-01-3132 min

Khameleon ClassicsTadmor-Palmyra: Reconstruction and Digitisation, with Zena KamashIn 2015, the world reacted furiously to the deliberate acts of destruction that the Islamic State group (Da’esh) staged in the Roman-period city of Tadmor-Palmyra in Syria. This provoked numerous plans for reconstruction, with each proposed project claiming to offer the best technological solution for rebuilding the archaeological site. In this podcast, Shivaike Shah discusses these events and their ramifications with Dr Zena Kamash, a British-Iraqi archaeologist and Senior Lecturer in Roman Archaeology at Royal Holloway University. They consider some of the key questions in the thorny debates over how we treat our cultural heritage. Should we rebuild sites of cu...2022-01-2429 min

Khameleon ClassicsMedea in Politics from 1750 to 1800, with Anna AlbrektsonClassical characters had an almost overwhelming cultural presence in eighteenth-century Europe, and Medea was no exception. In the short period between 1750 and the turn of the nineteenth century, one of the most complex characters from Greek myth appeared all over Europe, from French tragedies to Swedish operas and German melodramas. But why would a woman who kills her children be ubiquitous on European stages at a moment defined by tender motherhood and the invention of childhood? In this episode, Dr Anna Cullhed from the University of Stockholm talks to Shivaike Shah about how the ever-transforming representations of Medea in this...2022-01-1727 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and Colonial Presences in Egypt, with Heba Abd el Gawad and Usama Ali GadEgypt’s history since the fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty in 30 BC has been one of continual invasion and reinvasion. During the nineteenth century, when France and Britain began to take notice of this lucrative and strategically placed Ottoman territory, there was a boom of European interest in ancient Egyptian culture, fed by the ready availability of well-preserved ancient papyri and objects in Egypt. This week, Shivaike Shah talks to Dr Heba Abd el Gawad from University College London and Dr Usama Ali Gad from Ain Shams University about the colonisation of Egyptology and its legacy in the modern museum an...2022-01-1035 min

Khameleon ClassicsHistorical Links Between Egypt, Greece and Rome, with Katherine Blouin and Rachel MairsIn the modern academy, Classics – the study of ancient Greek and Roman language, culture, and society – is usually separated from Egyptology, which deals with ancient Egyptian civilisation and history. But that separation falsifies the real relationship between Greece, Rome, and Egypt, which was one of cultural exchange, commercial interdependence, and eventually colonisation. In this episode, Shivaike Shah speaks to Professor Katherine Blouin from the University of Toronto and Professor Rachel Mairs from the University of Reading about the history of contact between Greece, Rome and Egypt, and why its importance has been downplayed in the university since the beginnings of Egyp...2022-01-0342 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and Eugenics in the USA, with Rebecca Futo KennedyClassical texts were the core of elite education in the United States from the founding of the country’s first university in the seventeenth century until the 1950s. They served as models for the crafting of the US constitution and proved foundational in the evolution of scientific thought on 'race' in America. Indeed, classical texts have been used time and again to justify enslavement, dehumanise Black and Indigenous people, craft segregation, and popularise white supremacist ideologies, all in the name of a white Euro-American or ‘Anglo-Saxon’ heritage. Why does ‘Classics’, as imagined by those who claim such heritage, continue to appear as...2021-12-2038 min

Khameleon ClassicsThe Medea Myth Before and After Euripides, with Jesse WeinerMedea was a source of fascination for ancient scholars as early as Hesiod’s Theogony, and yet the early classical sources make no mention of the intentional infanticide that Euripides made an infamous and essential part of the myth. Conversely, authors writing after Euripides bore his iconic tragedy and its infanticide in mind even as they focused on other aspects of the story and characterised Medea differently. In this episode, Shivaike Shah and Professor Jesse Weiner from Hamilton College explore the myths surrounding Medea, from the earliest Greek literature through Roman antiquity and beyond. They consider the many receptions of Me...2021-12-1333 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and the Modern Alt Right, with Curtis DozierWhen Professor Curtis Dozier of Vassar College began documenting the appropriation of Greco-Roman antiquity by white supremacist hate groups, he realised that many aspects of the ancient past are, without distortion, congenial to contemporary white ethnonationalism. Indeed, he found that white ethnonationalists often reproduce ideas about Greco-Roman antiquity that have historically enjoyed mainstream currency, particularly where the study of Greco-Roman antiquity was associated with elite culture and politics. In this episode, Professor Dozier speaks to Shivaike Shah about his experiences documenting appropriations of ancient Greece and Rome on his website Pharos: Doing Justice to the Classics. How far are contemporary...2021-12-0633 min

Khameleon ClassicsExpanding the Classical Canon, with Kathleen CruzHow might the field of Classics address the unique concerns and questions posed by its students from diverse backgrounds? One valuable way to answer this question is to privilege approaches to the ancient world traditionally eclipsed by literary studies: that is, studying the legacy of ancient works, ideas and associations in other contexts, especially via the study of material culture and classical reception. A complementary approach to the above question is to turn to the classical literary canon itself and consider the potential limits of the texts that are traditionally offered to students as the best of what the ancient...2021-11-2932 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and the British Empire in India, with Phiroze VasuniaClassical Greece and Rome have long been intertwined with colonialism. India was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and there were extensive trade and cultural contacts between South Asia and the Mediterranean region. When British colonial rule began in India, one of the frames through which Britons viewed the region was that of Greek and Roman antiquity: they imagined themselves following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great or legendary Roman conquerors. In this episode, Shivaike Shah speaks to Professor Phiroze Vasunia from University College London about the rich and fascinating connections between antiquity, Britain and India in the...2021-11-2242 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and Students of Colour, with Andi Burton MarshIs Classics outreach working? Does it meet the concerns of students once they’re at university? Shivaike Shah speaks with Andi Marsh, recent University of Oxford graduate, about her experiences studying Classics as a state-educated Black woman. They discuss how Andi founded the Christian Cole Society to build a community of Classics students of colour and amplify the voices and histories of BIPOC people from the ancient world, as well as within academia; how crucial curriculum reform is for outreach; and how she found working with (and sometimes against) the Oxford Classics Faculty to decolonise Oxford Classics. Heavily in...2021-11-1536 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics in Haiti, with Tom HawkinsWhen Haiti declared its independence from France on 1 January 1804, it began the process of fostering a national culture. One element of this cultural development can be seen at the intersection of Haitian literature with the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome. In this episode, Shivaike Shah talks with Tom Hawkins, Associate Professor of Classics at Ohio State University, about the ways in which Haitian authors have sought ‘to take back Classics from the colonial archive’ (Emily Greenwood) in texts ranging from the earliest years of the new nation to the contemporary Haitian diaspora.To find out more about this...2021-11-0829 min

Khameleon ClassicsMedea's Performance History, with Fiona MacintoshShivaike Shah talks to Professor Fiona Macintosh from the University of Oxford, director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, an online research project that has digitised and made accessible thousands of sources relating to classical drama and performance. Shivaike and Fiona talk about the APGRD’s work, and in particular, the interactive e-book Medea: A Performance History, which was published in 2016. They then discuss how our understanding of Medea has changed over time, and in particular, how specific translations and performances of the play have been used time and again to illustrate contemporary political debates.2021-11-0134 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics in Nazi Germany, with Helen RocheIn both Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, classical literature and history were appropriated to provide a mythic origin and justification for fascist politics. In this episode, Shivaike talks to Helen Roche, Associate Professor of Modern European Cultural History at Durham University, about the relationship between Classics, Fascism, and colonialism. Helen discusses her research, which explores the way that ancient Greek education was co-opted by Nazi Germany. Looking back to the eighteenth century and forward to modern Europe, Helen and Shivaike explore why notions of classical superiority and desirability have held such sway in right-wing states.To find...2021-10-2532 min

Khameleon ClassicsVictorian Philhellenism and Greek Love, with Daniel OrrellsThe Greeks – and the Athenians in particular – were lionised by the Victorians for their art, their culture, and their military prowess. But the ancient Greeks also worried the Victorians because they seemed to permit sexual relationships between males. In this podcast, Shivaike Shah and his guest, Professor Daniel Orrells from the Department of Classics at King’s College London, explore the nineteenth-century debates about ‘Greek love’. Shivaike and Daniel talk about how Victorian men who were attracted to other males turned back to the ancient Greeks, and ask what we ought to make today of this example of Victorian philhellenism.2021-10-1832 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics in African Diasporic Writing, with Justine McConnellWole Soyinka in Nigeria, Toni Morrison in the United States, Derek Walcott in the Caribbean, and Bernardine Evaristo in the UK are just a few of the contemporary Black writers who have engaged with Graeco-Roman antiquity in their writing. In this podcast, Shivaike Shah speaks to Justine McConnell, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at King’s College London, about why ancient Greece and Rome hold such a prominent place in 20th- and 21st-century literature by African and African diaspora writers. How do we explore the classical influence on works such as Toni Morrison’s Sula and Bernadine Evaristo’s The Empero...2021-10-1131 min

Khameleon ClassicsWhy Diversify Classics? with Arum ParkA Google search for ‘diversity and Classics’ reveals the field’s growing dedication to diversity in recent years, particularly in North America and the United Kingdom. But what do we mean when we say ‘diversity’, and—more importantly—to what end do we seek greater diversity in Classics? Shivaike Shah speaks with Arum Park, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Arizona, to explore these questions and to discuss steps that have been and can still be taken to diversify Classics.To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonp...2021-10-0434 min

Khameleon ClassicsClassics and Colonialism in West Africa, with Barbara GoffIn this episode Shivaike talks to Professor Barbara Goff, from the University of Reading, about the many roles of classical education in colonial West Africa. The teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek (and Hebrew) to West African boys was first undertaken by European missionaries as a way to prepare Africans to staff their Christian churches. But it then became a hallmark of professional status, and classically educated early nationalists, who vigorously opposed the British colonial occupation, could use the colonisers’ tools of Latin and Greek against them. African success with and fluency in classical languages then became a problem for th...2021-09-2731 min

Khameleon ClassicsStaging Medea: Then and Now, with Oliver TaplinEuripides’s play Medea has continued to fascinate and provoke ever since its first performance almost 2500 years ago. But what did that first performance look like, and how did it contribute to enabling the play’s endurance ever since? In this episode, Shivaike Shah speaks to Oliver Taplin, former Professor of Classics at the University of Oxford, about why Medea’s debut at the City Dionysia festival in Athens in 431BCE, where it only came third, was so groundbreaking - and so shocking.To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https...2021-09-2724 min

Khameleon ClassicsRace in Antiquity, with Denise McCoskeyIt cannot be said enough that the Greeks and Romans did not view race the way we do today. Most notably, they did not use skin colour as a basis for dividing people into racial categories. In this podcast, Shivaike talks to Denise McCoskey, Associate Professor of Classics and Black World Studies at Miami University, about what race meant in the ancient world. How - and why - was race used as a concept in Greek and Roman times? And how do discussions about the Greeks and Romans help us to interrogate our own modern understanding of race?...2021-09-2726 min

Khameleon ClassicsThe Question of the Foreigner in Homer and Athenian Tragedy, with Carol DoughertyThe question of the foreigner is one that permeates ancient Greek literature just as it plagues us today – in terms of global politics and economics (what shall we do about immigration?) and also as questions of identity (who are we and do we still belong here?). Shivaike Shah speaks with Carol Dougherty, Professor of Classical Studies at Wellesley College, about foreignness in classical texts. Works like Homer’s Odyssey and Aeschylus’s Suppliants reveal ancient Greek cultures that were just as complicated, self-questioning, diverse and unsure about themselves as we are today. Both texts are the product of momentous overseas encoun...2021-09-2732 min

Khameleon ClassicsComing Soon - Khameleon ClassicsKhameleon Classics is coming! In this new podcast series, host Shivaike Shah interviews academics and experts in the field to uncover the complicated, influential legacy of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.2021-09-2001 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesPlatforming Artists Podcasts: Andi Burton MarshShivaike Shah hosts a podcast series with the artists and academics on the team in order to create a dialogue with potential audiences. The podcasts discuss the collaborations on Medea and explores the work of each guest beyond the ‘Medea’ project. Supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme and the Arts Council England 2021-06-1637 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesPlatforming Artists Podcasts: Rosa AndujarShivaike Shah hosts a podcast series with the artists and academics on the team in order to create a dialogue with potential audiences. The podcasts discuss the collaborations on Medea and explores the work of each guest beyond the ‘Medea’ project. Supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme and the Arts Council England 2021-05-1335 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesPlatforming Artists Podcasts: Theophina GabrielShivaike Shah hosts a podcast series with the artists and academics on the team in order to create a dialogue with potential audiences. The podcasts discuss the collaborations on Medea and explores the work of each guest beyond the ‘Medea’ project. Supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme and the Arts Council England.2021-04-1932 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesPlatforming Artists Podcasts: Fiona MacintoshShivaike Shah hosts a podcast series with the artists and academics on the team in order to create a dialogue with potential audiences. The podcasts discuss the collaborations on Medea and explores the work of each guest beyond the ‘Medea’ project. Supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme and the Arts Council England 2021-03-2337 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesPlatforming Artists Podcasts: Simran UppalShivaike Shah hosts a podcast series with the artists and academics on the team in order to create a dialogue with potential audiences. The podcasts discuss the collaborations on Medea and explores the work of each guest beyond the ‘Medea’ project. Supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme and the Arts Council England 2021-02-2631 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesPlatforming Artists Podcasts: Azan AhmedShivaike Shah hosts a podcast series with the artists and academics on the team in order to create a dialogue with potential audiences. The podcasts discuss the collaborations on Medea and explores the work of each guest beyond the ‘Medea’ project. Supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme and the Arts Council England.2021-02-0940 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesPlatforming Artists Podcasts: Francesca Amewudah-RiversShivaike Shah hosts a podcast series with the artists and academics on the team in order to create a dialogue with potential audiences. The podcasts discuss the collaborations on Medea and explores the work of each guest beyond the ‘Medea’ project. Supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme and the Arts Council England 2021-02-0530 min

Reimagining Ancient Greece and Rome: APGRD PodcastMedea - A Mirror for the 21st CenturyAvery Willis Hoffman, Fran Amewudah and Shivaike Shah talk about the BAME Medea project In this episode of Staging the Archive, Dr Avery Willis Hoffman (artistic director at Brown Arts Initiative) interviews Oxford alumni Shivaike Shah and Fran Amewudah about their latest project: reinventing and reimagining their successful all-BAME cast student-production of Medea in 2018. Introduced by Giovanna Di Martino; recorded in August 2020.2020-12-0942 min

Reimagining Ancient Greece and Rome: APGRD PodcastMedea - A Mirror for the 21st Century (Transcript)Avery Willis Hoffman, Fran Amewudah and Shivaike Shah talk about the BAME Medea project In this episode of Staging the Archive, Dr Avery Willis Hoffman (artistic director at Brown Arts Initiative) interviews Oxford alumni Shivaike Shah and Fran Amewudah about their latest project: reinventing and reimagining their successful all-BAME cast student-production of Medea in 2018. Introduced by Giovanna Di Martino; recorded in August 2020.2020-12-0900 min