WORKSHOP

Speaking Religion:
Religious Discourse and Public Speaking in Classical Athens and Beyond
University of Cyprus, 19 June 2018

Organizers:
ANDREAS SERAFIM is a specialist in Greek rhetoric and performance criticism, with a Ph.D. from
University College London (2013). He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics at the University
of Cyprus. He has recently published his Routledge monograph, Attic Oratory and Performance
(2017). He has also published the interdisciplinary volume Theatre of Justice: Aspects of
Performance in Greco-Roman Oratory and Rhetoric (Brill 2017). The next great research challenge
for him is to prepare his second monograph: Religious Discourse in Attic Oratory and Politics (under
contract, Routledge; expected in 2020). He is also co-editing the volume The Ancient Art of
Persuasion across Genres and Topics (contracted with Brill; expected in 2018), the volume The
rhetoric of unity and division in ancient literature (contracted with De Gruyter; expected in 2020)
and the first Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Ancient Rhetoric (expected in 2020).
MARIA YPSILANTI is Associate Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Cyprus. She obtained her
first degree from the Department of Greek Philology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University
of Athens (1991-1995). She studied at a post-graduate level at King’s College (University of London),
Department of Classics (M.A. in Classics, 1996-1997), and at University College London (University
of London), Department of Greek and Latin (PhD in Classics, 1998-2003). PhD thesis: An Edition with
Commentary of Selected Epigrams of Crinagoras. The book (revised and enriched with the rest of
Crinagoras’ poems, with double as much the size of the thesis) was published by Oxford University
Press (2018). In 1999 she was awarded a three-year scholarship from the National Scholarships
Foundation of Greece (IKY) in support of her PhD research. From 2004 onwards she teaches Ancient
Greek Literature at the University of Cyprus.

Keynote speaker:
EDWARD M. HARRIS is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Durham University and Honorary
Professorial Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Democracy and the Rule of
Law in Classical Athens (Cambridge) and The Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens (Oxford).
He has translated Demosthenes, Speeches 20-22 and Demosthenes Speeches 23-26 (Texas). He has
co-edited The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece, Symposion 1997 and The Ancient Economy:
Markets, Households and City-States (Cambridge). He is now working on a book about law and the
sacred in Ancient Greece.

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Speakers:
DESPINA KERAMIDA studied at the University of Cyprus and at the University of Leeds, where she
obtained her Ph.D. (2012). She has worked as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Leeds (2009–
2011), as an Adjunct Tutor at the Open University of Cyprus (2016) and as a Special Scientist at the
University of Cyprus (Department of Classics and Philosophy 2014, 2015, 2017) teaching modules
on Latin language and literature. She has also worked as a Special Scientist for the needs of the
research programme “Concepts and Functions of European Philhellenism in the era of the
Restoration (1815–30)” (Department of French and European Studies, University of Cyprus, 2015–
2016). Her research interests include Roman elegy and epic (in particular Ovid), Roman epigrams
(Martial) as well as Greco-Roman culture and religion, as indicated by her publications such as
“Heroides 10 and Ars Amatoria 1.527–64: Ariadne crossing the boundaries between texts” 8.5
(2010), “Philhellenism, Patronage and Poetics in Martial” in M. Vöhler/S. Alekou/M. Pechlivanos
(eds.), Concepts and Functions of European Philhellenism: Aspects of a Transcultural Movement
(forthcoming).
ELIZABETH DEPALMA DIGESER is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She
received her Ph.D. from that institution in 1995 and is the author of The Making of a Christian
Empire: Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca, 2000) and A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists and
the Great Persecution (Ithaca, 2012). She has two current projects, a study of the relationship
between perceived collusion and charges of heresy during the “Great Persecution” and an
examination of the role Gaul played in Constantine’s success and legacy. In addition to the history
of the ancient and early medieval world, she teaches undergraduate and graduate classes on Rome
and its empire.
GLENN S. HOLLAND is the Bishop James Mills Thoburn Chair in Religious Studies at Allegheny College.
He received his B.A. at Stanford (1974), his M.A. at the University of Oxford (1981), where he was a
member of Mansfield College, and his Ph.D. at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago
(1985). He has taught at Allegheny since 1985. He has written books covering a range of topics: The
Tradition that You Received from Us: 2 Thessalonians in the Pauline Tradition, (Tübingen:
Mohr/Siebeck, 1988), Divine Irony (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2000), and Gods
in the Desert: Religions of the Ancient Near East (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). He was
a co-editor of Philodemus and the New Testament World (Leiden: Brill, 2004) and two collections of
essays devoted to teaching biblical studies in a liberal arts context published by Sheffield Phoenix in
2012 and 2015. In 2005 he created The Great Courses’ “Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean
World” a series of forty-eight half-hour lectures on DVD covering the religious cultures of ancient
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine, Greece, Rome, as well as early Christianity. More recently his
attention has turned to performance as a dominant factor in ancient rhetoric. His publications on
this topic include “Playing to the Groundlings: Shakespeare Performance Criticism and Performance
Criticism of the Biblical Texts” (Neotestamentica 41:2, 2007), and chapters devoted to performance
in Paul and Ancient Rhetoric: Theory and Practice in the Hellenistic Context (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016) and the second edition of Paul in the Greco-Roman World (New York:
Bloomsbury, 2017). Professor Holland is also a co-editor of Alpha (published by the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst) and an assistant editor of Common Knowledge (Duke University Press).
HANNAH WILLEY is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Murray
Edwards College. She is currently working on a monograph on the interrelation of law and religion
in the Greek city state. Other projects, published and in progress, include articles or chapters on
religious pollution in Plato’s Euthyphro, the lawgiver traditions, religion and theology in the
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speeches of Demosthenes, the role of animals in Greek myth, and a large-scale study of cult
foundation in the ancient world.
HANNE ROER, PhD, associate professor of rhetoric at the University of Copenhagen. Her PhD-
dissertation (1999) on the poetics of Dante Alighieri is the basis of my book: Beatrice i Paradiset. En
rejse i Dantes værker (Aarhus University Press 2010). She has also edited and partly written a
textbook on rhetorical criticism: Retorikkens Aktualitet, 3. Edition, 2014 (co-editor M. Lund). She
teaches the history of rhetoric, visual rhetoric, rhetorical criticism and theory. She is currently
writing a book on the reception of Augustine’s rhetorical works, from the early middle ages to
contemporary rhetorical theory. One result so far is the lemma “Rhetoric” in The Oxford Guide to
the Historical Reception of Augustine, ed. K. Pollmann, OUP 2013; another is an article comparing
Kenneth Burke’s interpretation of Augustine’s religious rhetoric in the Confessions compared to J.-
F. Lyotard’s book on the Confessions: http://www.kbjournal.org/roer_reading_the_negative.
JAMES W. WATTS is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University, where
he has taught since 1999. He is a biblical scholar whose research focuses on the interplay of ritual
and rhetoric in the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible. He also is a co-founder of SCRIPT, the
Society for Comparative Research in Iconic and Performative Texts, which fosters interdisciplinary
collaboration among scholars in investigating the social functions of material texts. He combines the
two research interests in his comparative studies of the ritualizing of scriptures. He is the author of
five books, including Reading Law: the Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch (1999) and
Understanding the Pentateuch as a Scripture (2017), and the editor of Iconic Books and Texts (2013)
and Sensing Sacred Texts (2018).
LEONORA NEVILLE studies Byzantine culture and society, and is the John and Jeanne Rowe Professor
of Byzantine History at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She is particularly interested in religion,
gender, and the importance of the classical past for Byzantine culture. She offers a new
interpretation of Anna Komnene’s strategies for writing classicizing Greek history as a woman in
Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian (Oxford 2016). The study of cultural
memories of classical Roman masculinity in Byzantium led her to write Heroes and Romans in
Twelfth-Century Byzantium (Cambridge 2012). She reconsidered the strength of the famed
Byzantine bureaucracy in Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100 (Cambridge 2004).
MICHAEL PASCHALIS is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Crete, Department of
Philology. He has published over 100 articles and 13 books on Hellenistic literature, Classical Roman
literature, the Ancient Novel, the literature of Late Antiquity, the reception of the Classics (in
Modern Greek literature and in Italian, English, and French literature) and Modern Greek Literature.
He is the author of Virgil’s Aeneid: Semantic Relations and Proper Names (Oxford 1997), the editor
of three volumes of Rethymnon Classical Studies and co-editor of five volumes of Ancient Narrative
Supplementa. In the field of Modern Greek he has published the following books: Re-reading Kalvos:
Andreas Kalvos, Italy and Classical Antiquity (2013) and Nikos Kazantzakis: From Homer to
Shakespeare. Studies on his Cretan Novels (2015). Forthcoming book in 2017: The Academies and
Cretan Renaissance Literature: An Encounter that did not Take Place.
REBECCA VAN HOVE is an ancient historian working on Greek religion and Athenian law and society.
After research stays in Germany (Erfurt) and Greece (British School at Athens), she completed her
PhD at King’s College London in 2018. Her thesis examined religion and authority in Attic oratory,
focusing on the use of sources of religious authority, such as oracles, dreams and oaths, in the
political and legal contexts of classical Athens. She recently completed a Fellowship as Visiting
Researcher at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies in Erfurt.

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ROGER REES is Reader in Latin at St Andrews University. His publications include Layers of Loyalty in
Latin Panegyric 289-307 (2002); Diocletian and the Tetrarchy (2004); (ed.) Romane Memento; Vergil
in the Fourth Century (2004); (ed.) Ted Hughes and the Classics (2009); (ed.) Latin Panegyric. Oxford
Readings in Classical Studies (2012); (co-ed. with B. J. Gibson) Pliny the Younger in Late Antiquity
(2013); (co-ed. with J. M. Madsen Roman Rule in Greek and Latin Writing. Double Vision (2014). He
has recently completed a commentary on Panegyrici Latinin II(12) and is now writing a biography of
the emperor Diocletian.
STELLA ALEKOU obtained a BA degree from the University of Cyprus, an MPhil in Classics from the
University of Glasgow and a PhD from Paris IV-Sorbonne. Her doctoral thesis, entitled "La
représentation de la femme dans les Héroïdes d’Ovide: Parole et mémoire dans les Lettres XII, XX
et XXI" [The Representation of Women in Ovid’s Heroides: Speech and Memory in Letters XII, XX
and XXI], awarded with Very Honourable Distinction and Unanimous Jury Congratulations, in 2011.
Stella Alekou was employed as a Research Associate at the University of Cyprus, Department of
French Studies and Modern Languages in 2014. She is currently a Special Scientist at the University
of Cyprus, Department of Classics and Philosophy, where she teaches Latin language. Her recent
research has focused on the reception of Greco-Roman texts in Western literature and the socio-
legal position of women in ancient literary works. She is co-editor of two Edited Volumes,
Philhellenism and European Identity: Concepts and Functions of European Philhellenism in the Era of
the Restoration (1815–30) and Medea De-dramatized, have been published in 2017 and 2018
respectively.

Panel chairs:
ANTONIA GIANNOULI is Associate Professor of Byzantine Literature at the University of Cyprus. She
obtained a B.A. from the University of Crete, and she pursues her postgraduate studies at the
Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the University of Vienna (Dr. phil., 1998). She
participated as a regular researcher at two projects of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna:
a. Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität (Lexicon of Byzantine Greek), b. Das Register des Patriarchats
von Konstantinopel (critical edition of the documents of the Patriarchal Archive at Constantinople),
as well as at the Project “Thesaurus Linguae Graecae“ of the University of Irvine in California. She
has held the Fellowship of the National Institute for Fellowships (I.K.Y., Athens) for the postgraduate
studies and a Research Summer Fellowship at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library (2003). Her
research interests focus on religious poetry, hymnography and their Byzantine commentaries,
history and theory of exegetic and homiletic texts, their role in the Byzantine education,
lexicography, critical editions and commenting of Byzantine literature.
ANTONIS PETRIDES is Associate Professor of Classics at the Open University of Cyprus, where he has
been teaching since 2007. He studied Greek Philology (specializing in Classics) at the Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki (1995–99) and he read Classics at Trinity College, University of Cambridge
(MPhil & PhD, 2000-2005). His research interests lie mainly in the field of Greek and Roman drama
(particularly postclassical performance), Hellenistic literature (mainly of the “comic mode”:
mimiamb, epic and philosophical parody, etc.), and Greek physiognomics. He is also interested in
reception studies (mainly the reception of ancient Greek drama in Modern Greek literature); in the
theory and practice of long-distance adult learning; and in the didactics of ancient Greek language
and literature in secondary education. Prominent among his recent publications is the monograph
Menander, New Comedy and the Visual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014), and the
volumes Greek Tragedy after the Fifth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming 2018), co-edited with Vayos Liapis, Debating with the Eumenides: Aspects of the
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Reception of Greek Tragedy in Modern Greece (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, forthcoming 2018), co-edited with Vayos Liapis and Maria Pavlou, and New Perspectives
on Postclassical Comedy (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2010), co-edited
with Sophia Papaioannou. Currently, he is preparing a new commentary on Menander’s play
Dyskolos for Oxford University Press.
GEORGIOS A. XENIS is Associate Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Cyprus. He studied
Classics at the Universities of Athens (B.A., 1993–7, the 1997 Class Valedictorian in a 300-member
graduating class), Oxford (Master of Studies, 1998, “Distinction”) and Cyprus (Ph.D., 2001), where
he has been teaching since 2002. His research focuses on Ancient Greek Textual Criticism and
Ancient Greek Scholarship both on literature and language. He has produced four critical editions
and edited a collective volume: (i) Scholia vetera in Sophoclis Electram, Berlin – New York: de Gruyter
(SGLG 12) 2010. (ii) Scholia vetera in Sophoclis Trachinias, Berlin – New York: de Gruyter (SGLG 13)
2010. (iii) Iohannes Alexandrinus. Praecepta Tonica, Berolini/Monachii/Bostoniae: de Gruyter (Bibl.
Teubneriana) 2015. (iv) Scholia vetera in Sophoclis Oedipum Coloneum, Berlin – New York: de
Gruyter (SGLG 18) 2018. (v) G. Xenis (ed.), Literature, Scholarship, Philosophy, and History: Classical
Studies in Memory of Ioannis Taifacos, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2015. The Electra scholia
edition was awarded the Academy of Athens prize “for the best monograph on, or critical edition
of, a work of classical literature, published in the last five years” (29th Dec. 2011). He also published
articles in such journals as Classical Quarterly, Rheinisches Museum, Classical Philology, Philologus,
Hermes, Mnemosyne, Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies.
STAVROULA CONSTANTINOU is Associate Professor of Byzantine Literature at the University of Cyprus.
She studied Byzantine, Western Medieval and Modern Greek Literature at the University of Cyprus
from 1992 to 1996, the Free University of Berlin from 1997 to 1999 and the University of Cambridge
from 1999 to 2004. Constantinou was also at the Free University of Berlin from 2000 to 2003 and
was awarded a doctorate of philosophy degree in Byzantine Literature from that institution.
Constantinou has taught Byzantine philology at the University of Cyprus since 2004. She was at the
Free University once more for 2010-11 as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellow. Her fields
of research include hagiography, Byzantine literary genres, poetry, performances and feminism and
she has published 20 scholarly articles. She has published two books: Female corporeal
performances: reading the body in Byzantine passions and lives of holy women in 2005 and Court
ceremonies and rituals of power in Byzantium and the medieval Mediterranean: comparative
perspectives in 2013. Constantinou is a member of the European Cultural Parliament