Ben Radcliffe
Lecturer of Classics and Archaeology | Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
Ben Radcliffe studies Ancient Greek literature, focusing on Homeric studies, critical theory, and aesthetics.
Biography
Ben Radcliffe is a Lecturer at Loyola Marymount University.
Education (2)
UCLA: Ph.D., Classics 2019
Stanford: B.A., Classics 2013
Areas of Expertise (1)
Classics
Links (1)
Event Appearances (10)
“Radical Certainty: Paraesthetics and Paranoia in the Odyssey”
ACLA June 2022
“Recasting Heroes: Labor, Metallurgy, and Critical Aesthetics in the Iliad"
SCS January 2022
“The Homeric Grimace, or the Conflicted Faces of Narrative”
Affect, Intensity, Antiquity August 2021
“The Spectral Planets of Derrida and Gene Wolfe”
ACLA April 2021
“Benjamin’s Niobe: Anger and Ambiguous Violence in Iliad 24"
SCS January 2021
“Counting and Catastrophe in Aeschylus’ Persae"
UC Berkeley, DAGRS November 2020
“Ears, Artifice, and Hephaestus’ Automatons in Iliad 18"
CAMWS May 2020
“Catalogues and Popular Politics in Aeschylus’ Persae"
SCS January 2020
“Khaos, Broken Plows, and Discontinuity in Hesiod"
CAMWS 2018
“Kata Moiran: Ideology and Style in the Odyssey"
SCS January 2017
Courses (5)
CLAR 1110 Elementary Greek I
Spring 2021 A basic introduction to Greek grammar and syntax, including noun declension and verb conjugation; translation of simple prose passages.
CLAR 1120 Elementary Greek II
Fall 2020 A continuation of the grammar and syntax of CLAR 1110, with a focus on more complex sentences; translation of more elaborate prose and poetry passages.
CLAR 2220 Ancient Comedy in Performance
Fall 2020, Fall 2022 A study of the plays of Aristophanes and Menander (in translation), with an emphasis on production.
CLAR 3220 Greek and Roman Religions
2021-2023 This course explores the religions of ancient Greece and Rome from our earliest evidence through the emergence of Christianity under the Roman Empire. While the course follows a broadly chronological outline, individual lectures will concentrate on specific themes, such as polytheism and monotheism, philosophy and religion, magic and personal religion, religion and the state, and the idea of “the foreign” in ancient religion.
CLAR 2260 Ancient Political Thought and Practice
Spring 2023 A survey of the origins and development of political thought in the ancient world, from the rise of Greek city-states to the breakup of the Roman empire. The course investigates how Greek and Roman authors, such as Homer, Aeschylus, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero, and Augustine, developed and contested fundamental political concepts, including justice, equality, authority, power, and conflict. The course also confronts the adverse legacies of ancient political systems, which excluded the vast majority of the population—slaves, women, and non-citizens—from public politics.
Articles (5)
Queer Kinship: Profit, Vivisection, Kitsch
Queer EuripidesBen Radcliffe
2022-05-01
A chapter on Euripides' Heraclidae in an edited volume on queer readings of Euripides. Drawing on scholarship that examines the relations between kinship, queerness, and political economy, I trace the ways in which profit (kerdos) serves as a force of social disruption in the world of the drama, variously subverting, transforming, and reinforcing the patriarchal norms that underly procreative kinship.
(Mis)counting Catastrophe in Aeschylus’ Persae
Classical AntiquityBen Radcliffe
2022-04-01
This article considers how mourning is configured as a site of political and aesthetic conflict in Aeschylus’ Persae.
The Politics of Aesthetic Experience in Odysseus’ Apologoi
American Journal of PhilologyBen Radcliffe
2021-06-01
In Books 9 and 10 of the Odyssey, Odysseus' companions promote the equal distribution of the spoils of their return voyage. This article argues that, as part of their commitment to social equality, the companions experiment with egalitarian modes of spectatorship and dining during the Aeolus and Lotus episodes. In these aesthetic encounters, the companions subvert Odysseus' position as the focus and focalizer of the narrative. The companions thus serve as an internal audience, figuring for the poem's external audiences an alternative form of narrative experience that resists the poem's centripetal orientation around the homecoming of a single, elite protagonist.
Becoming Domestic in Hesiod’s Works and Days
RamusBen Radcliffe
2020-12-01
An article on Hesiod's Works and Days in the Ramus special issue, "Deterritorializing Classics: Deleuze, Guattari and Antiquity"
The Aesthetics of Equality in Early Greek Poetry
University of California - Los Angeles2019 This dissertation asks how Homer, Hesiod, and Theognis envision egalitarian alternatives to the conditions of social stratification that prevail in the fictional worlds of early Greek poetry.
