It is my pleasure and honour to write the first short post for our new blog, which aims to bring together academic and creative work in Ancient World Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology.
This will be a space for Students and academics to share their work in an inclusive but also peer reviewed way, without going through the long process of submitting to a journal. We would like to create a community where all types of submissions are valid, whether you want to write poetry or a comic strip, a well-researched academic article or a short site report, and where you can obtain feedback quickly from your peers.
As an academic and creative writer I have found the intersection between research and imagination to be a fruitful one. By trying to understand what Clodia Metelli’s father’s garden might have looked like in 80 BCE for a short story I have researched an area I would never have looked into as a classical reception scholar of Greek mythology in film and television. By writing Doctor Who fan fiction I stepped briefly into the world of Thutmose in Akhenaten’s Amarna. And my second attempt at a novel, Emily’s Argonautica, required a much closer reading of Apollonius’ Argonautica than any academic activity I might have undertaken. What all these experiences have in common is that by their nature they are multi-disciplinary. They bridge the gap between many pasts and presents, much wider even than bridging the gaps between ancient history, material culture and literature.
My co-founders Guen, Giulia and I would like to encourage you to collaborate and experiment, and look forward to reading and editing your contributions. To start us off I would like to share a short story and a collage that are centred around the Venus de Milo.
Dr Amanda Potter, honorary fellow
University of Liverpool and Open University
The short story is available to read here or to download below.