It’s been another of those mad fortnights (there’s a surprise). In addition to lecture writing, tutorial prep, and marking, last week I headed out beyond the ring road – and out of my comfort zone – to give a talk on my work at the St Leonards-Mayfield School near Tunbridge Wells. This is the second one of these I’ve done (the first was at the King’s School, Worcester), but I’m a firm believer in Widening Participation so when I came to Oxford, I immediately joined the roll of names kept by the Outreach office to give to schools at times like this.
The school was lovely and the teachers welcoming, though the occasion not what I’d expected. Usually talks get given to an after-school Classics club; this was essentially a teacher training day for staff from local schools and my slot seemed to be the plenary lecture (gulp!). Suddenly my 12-certificate, toned-down schoolgirl version of what I work on seemed inadequate – there was an extempore ramping up of the bloody, violent elements of the Iphigenia story, and a few jokes about olisboi thrown in, but nothing (hopefully) that would see me lynched by a mob of angry parents, given that some students were in the audience. It seemed to go down well, however.
Ancient marriage is a difficult subject for a 1-hour talk – there is such a diversity of practice, and also such differing perspectives depending on the source. I usually stick to the Classical evidence with a bit of Sappho and some vase-painting, and leave the question time to explore the nuances of such a fundamental social and personal ritual.
Tags: ancient marriage, epithalamium, gender, outreach, transition, wedding song
