Dr Henry Stead

Lecturer in Latin

Researcher profile

Phone

+44 (0)1334 462621

Email

has22@st-andrews.ac.uk

Office

S12

Location

Swallowgate

Office hours

Research areas

I am a Classical Reception scholar and Latinist with a special interest in the reception of Greek and Roman culture among the British working classes from the late 18th to the early 20th century. I also work on verse translation and other poetic engagements with the classical, especially but not exclusively those produced by the British left.

BRAVE NEW CLASSICS

My current research project is called Brave New Classics. It began life in May 2016 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship hosted by Open University. Until May 2019 it investigated the unlikely but electric convergence of classics and British communism to 1956. The project has since extended its scope and now explores the relationship between world communism and the classics, and aims for the BNC website to become a key platform for international and collaborative research into the subject. The work dovetails with my previous study on working-class engagements with Greek and Roman culture in Britain and Ireland to 1939. 

CLASSICS AND CLASS IN BRITAIN (1789-1939)

I was the Research Associate on the major AHRC-funded research project into working-class receptions of ancient Greek and Roman culture, led by Prof. Edith Hall and hosted by King?s College London (Jan 2013-Dec 2015). Our website can be visited here, and our jointly edited volume, Greek and Roman Classics and the British Struggle for Social Reform (Bloomsbury, 2015), is currently available in all good legal deposit libraries. Additionally, we have a joint authored book forthcoming (Routledge, 2020) entitled A People?s History of Classics. 

Before working on Classics and Class I was completing my first classical reception project, which grew from my doctoral thesis.

A COCKNEY CATULLUS

At the Open University and University of Oxford, 2008-11 I held the Michael Comber Studentship for Classical Reception. I explored the reception of Catullus in Romantic-era Britain. The book is now published by Oxford University Press as A Cockney Catullus (2015).

Selected publications and performances

• A People's History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain 1689-1939

  Hall, E. & Stead, H., 6 Mar 2020, London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. 642 p.

  Research output: Book/Report ? Book

• Classics down the mineshaft: a buried history

  Stead, H., 1 Dec 2018, Classics in Extremis: The Edges of Classical Reception. Richardson, E. (ed.). Bloomsbury Academic, (Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding ? Chapter

• Kane O?Hara?s Midas: The Irish Origins of Classical Burlesque

  Stead, H., 2018, Epic Performances: From the Middle Ages into the Twenty-first Century. Oxford University Press (OUP), p. 461-475

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding ? Chapter

• The Only Tone For Terror: Tony Harrison and the Gorgon?s Gaze

  Stead, H. A., 2018, New Light on Tony Harrison. Hall, E. (ed.). Oxford University Press (OUP), p. 55-78

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding ? Chapter

• Between the Party and the Ivory Tower: Classics and Communism in 1930s Britain

  Hall, E. & Stead, H. A., 2016, Classics and Class: Greek and Latin Classics and Communism at School. Movrin, D. & Olechowska, E. (eds.). p. 3-31

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding ? Chapter

• A Cockney Catullus: The Reception of Catullus in Romantic Britain, 1795-1821

  Stead, H., 1 Nov 2015, Oxford University Press (OUP). (Classical Presences)

  Research output: Book/Report ? Book

• Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform

  Stead, H. (ed.) & Hall, E. (ed.), 1 Jun 2015, Bloomsbury Academic.

  Research output: Other contribution

• Swinish Classics; a Conservative Clash with Cockney Culture

  Stead, H. A., 18 Jun 2015, Greek and Roman Classics and the British Struggle for Social Reform. Stead, H. & Hall, E. (eds.). Bloomsbury Academic, p. 55-78 (Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding ? Chapter (peer-reviewed)

• Seneca?s Oedipus ? by hook or by crook

  Stead, H. A., Mar 2013, In : Canadian Review of Comparative Literature. 40, 1, p. 88-104

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

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