Jan Haywood
I received my undergraduate degree in History and master’s degree in Classics and Ancient History both from the University of Manchester. I then moved to the University of Liverpool, where I gained my PhD in 2013. Since graduating, I have been the J. P. Postgate University Teacher in Classics at the University of Liverpool, a Teaching Fellow in Ancient History at the University of Leicester, and a Lecturer in Classical Studies at The Open University. I joined the University of Leicester in August 2021 to take up a lectureship in Ancient History.
My research centres on ancient Greek historiography and its cultural-literary contexts, as well as the reception of ancient Greek culture in antiquity and beyond. My first book (Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War: Dialogues on Tradition, Bloomsbury 2018), co-authored with Professor Naoíse Mac Sweeney (University of Vienna), explores the varied responses to Homer's version of the Trojan War in both ancient and modern media, from Attic pottery to the Elizabethan stage to Hollywood cinema. The book charts a complex, pluriform engagement with Homer's work, which many have engaged with both for its historical and literary merits.
I am currently putting the finishing touches to my next book, Herodotus and his Sources, a revised version of my doctoral thesis. The book identifies considerable connections between Herodotus' work and other textual sources (oracles, prose writers, epic poetry, etc.). In unearthing this extensive engagement with a wide range of texts in the Histories, my research challenges current perceptions of Herodotus as an historian reliant predominantly on oral sources.
In addition to this project, my current research is centred on the role of religious narratives (and in particular, divination stories) in other areas of Greek historiography. In addition to an article on the importance of the divine in terms of explaining Xenophon's successful retreat back to Greece from Asia Minor in the Anabasis, I am now exploring Herodotus' sophisticated approach to human and divine causation. In addition, I am co-convening a collaborative research project with Professor Thomas Harrison (University of St Andrews), which brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars in order to explore the role of religious material in Thucydides' History.
I am also a passionate university teacher, and I have taught a variety of modules that touch upon Greek and Roman history, literature and culture, as well as ancient Greek and Latin language. I have also led three successful taught postgraduate study tours to Rome, in which students explored the archaeology of this site from antiquity up until today.
I would be delighted to discuss research projects on any of my major research interests: ancient historiography, Greek divination, the Trojan War and its receptions, and classical reception.
My research centres on ancient Greek historiography and its cultural-literary contexts, as well as the reception of ancient Greek culture in antiquity and beyond. My first book (Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War: Dialogues on Tradition, Bloomsbury 2018), co-authored with Professor Naoíse Mac Sweeney (University of Vienna), explores the varied responses to Homer's version of the Trojan War in both ancient and modern media, from Attic pottery to the Elizabethan stage to Hollywood cinema. The book charts a complex, pluriform engagement with Homer's work, which many have engaged with both for its historical and literary merits.
I am currently putting the finishing touches to my next book, Herodotus and his Sources, a revised version of my doctoral thesis. The book identifies considerable connections between Herodotus' work and other textual sources (oracles, prose writers, epic poetry, etc.). In unearthing this extensive engagement with a wide range of texts in the Histories, my research challenges current perceptions of Herodotus as an historian reliant predominantly on oral sources.
In addition to this project, my current research is centred on the role of religious narratives (and in particular, divination stories) in other areas of Greek historiography. In addition to an article on the importance of the divine in terms of explaining Xenophon's successful retreat back to Greece from Asia Minor in the Anabasis, I am now exploring Herodotus' sophisticated approach to human and divine causation. In addition, I am co-convening a collaborative research project with Professor Thomas Harrison (University of St Andrews), which brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars in order to explore the role of religious material in Thucydides' History.
I am also a passionate university teacher, and I have taught a variety of modules that touch upon Greek and Roman history, literature and culture, as well as ancient Greek and Latin language. I have also led three successful taught postgraduate study tours to Rome, in which students explored the archaeology of this site from antiquity up until today.
I would be delighted to discuss research projects on any of my major research interests: ancient historiography, Greek divination, the Trojan War and its receptions, and classical reception.
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Books by Jan Haywood
Inspired by the dialogues inherent in the process of reception, the book adopts a dialogic structure. In each chapter, paired essays by Haywood and Mac Sweeney offer contrasting authorial voices addressing a single theme, thereby drawing out connections and dissonances between a diverse suite of classical and post-classical Iliadic receptions.
Inspired by the dialogues inherent in the process of reception, the book adopts a dialogic structure. In each chapter, paired essays by Haywood and Mac Sweeney offer contrasting authorial voices addressing a single theme, thereby drawing out connections and dissonances between a diverse suite of classical and post-classical Iliadic receptions.
The resulting book offers new insights, both into individual instances of Iliadic reception in particular historical contexts, but also into the workings of a complex story tradition. The centrality of the Iliad within the wider Trojan War tradition is shown to be a function of conscious engagement not only with Iliadic content, but also with Iliadic status and the iconic idea of the Homeric.
Papers by Jan Haywood
Book Chapters by Jan Haywood
Inspired by the dialogues inherent in the process of reception, the book adopts a dialogic structure. In each chapter, paired essays by Haywood and Mac Sweeney offer contrasting authorial voices addressing a single theme, thereby drawing out connections and dissonances between a diverse suite of classical and post-classical Iliadic receptions.
Inspired by the dialogues inherent in the process of reception, the book adopts a dialogic structure. In each chapter, paired essays by Haywood and Mac Sweeney offer contrasting authorial voices addressing a single theme, thereby drawing out connections and dissonances between a diverse suite of classical and post-classical Iliadic receptions.
The resulting book offers new insights, both into individual instances of Iliadic reception in particular historical contexts, but also into the workings of a complex story tradition. The centrality of the Iliad within the wider Trojan War tradition is shown to be a function of conscious engagement not only with Iliadic content, but also with Iliadic status and the iconic idea of the Homeric.
https://www.openmaterialreligion.org/resources-1/2019/5/3/virtual-collections