Afroditi Angelopoulou

Greek literature and Poetics; Athenian Drama, Performance and Embodiment; Plato and the Senses; Aesthetics and Ethics

Originally from Greece, I received my BA and MA in Classical Philology from the University of Athens, and my PhD in Classics from the University of Southern California. I returned to USC after having taught at Dartmouth College for two years. My forthcoming book, The Body and the Senses in Greek Tragedy (OUP), evaluates the role of embodied experience in the construction of dramatic narratives, and in the generation and communication of meaning. Such an embodied approach can open up a fruitful line of inquiry into how drama can be experienced in live performance, but also through a text. By considering the body not only as an object of inquiry but also as a hermeneutic tool, my study seeks to offer a compelling methodology for studying language, subjective experience and performance reception in the field of drama.

I have published on the role of physical, aesthetic and cultural taste in the writings of Plato, as well as in the comedies of Aristophanes. I have also written on the interrelationship between affect and gender in the Athenian theater, and a forthcoming article proposes a comparative reading of Euripides’ Medea and Alexandros Papadiamantis’ The Murderess as “unhappy archives,” through the lens of Sara Ahmed’s critical analysis. 

• Ph.D. Classics, University of Southern California, 2017
• M.A. Ancient Greek and Latin Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
• B.A. Philology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens