Miriam Anna Leonard is Professor of Greek Literature and its Reception at University College, London. She is known in particular for her work on the reception of Greek tragedy in modern intellectual thought.[1]
Miriam Leonard | |
---|---|
Nationality | British |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
Thesis | Appropriations of antiquity in contemporary French thought |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classics, Classical reception studies |
Institutions | Bristol University, University College, London |
Career
editLeonard is the daughter of Dick Leonard, the politician, writer and journalist, and Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, a professor of German literature.[2] Her brother is Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. She studied classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she gained a BA, MPhil and PhD.[3] Her PhD, Appropriations of antiquity in contemporary French thought, was awarded by the University of Cambridge in 2002.[4] From 2002 to 2007, Leonard worked in the Classics Department of University of Bristol as a lecturer in Classics and Ancient History,[5] and she moved to University College London as a lecturer in Greek literature and its reception in 2007.[1] Leonard delivered her inaugural lecture on Tragedy and Modernity on 1 May 2012.[6]
Leonard's work focuses on the intellectual history of classics from the 18th century to the modern day. Her doctoral work was published as Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought in 2005 in which she examined the Paris school of classical scholarship.[7]
Leonard has worked on the use of Greek tragedy by 19th-20th century writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud, as a key reference for their work. Reference to Greek tragedy underpinned their use of terminology and the intellectual frameworks they constructed, for example, Nietzsche's use of the Apollonian and Dionysian concept in The Birth of Tragedy or Freud's introduction of the Oedipus complex in The Interpretation of Dreams. Leonard contends that the continued use of Greek tragedy in modern intellectual concepts has both shaped contemporary culture and has affected modern views of antiquity.[8] Leonard was awarded a Leverhulme Trust grant in 2011 for her work on Tragedy and modernity: from Hegel to Heidegger.[9] In 2012 Leonard was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in the field of Classics.[1][10] She presented her work on Tragedy and Modernity on ABC Radio National in Australia on 8 November 2012.[11]
Leonard lectured on The Beauty of the Ethical Life: Lacan's Antigone at the University of Michigan on 4 March 2004.[12] In 2014, Leonard delivered the opening lecture for the joint meeting of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies (CRIS) and the Cambridge University Project for Religions in the Humanities (CUPRiH) at Cambridge on Jews and Greeks in Nineteenth-Century European Intellectual Thinking.[13] On 14 February 2017, Leonard gave a lecture at Princeton University on Hannah Arendt’s Revolutionary Antiquity.[14] Leonard delivered the 20th Annual Classical Studies Roberts Lecture on Classics and the Birth of Modernity on 16 February 2018 at Dickinson College.[15][16]
Selected publications
edit- Tragic Modernities (Harvard University Press, 2015)[17]
- ed. with Joshua Billings Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2015)
- Socrates and the Jews: Hellenism and Hebraism from Moses Mendelssohn to Sigmund Freud (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
- ed. Derrida and Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2010)[18]
- How to Read Ancient Philosophy (Granta, 2008)
- ed. with Vanda Zajko Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought (Oxford University Press, 2006)
- Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought (Oxford University Press, 2005)[7]
External links
edit- Miriam Leonard (UCL staff page)
- Precarious Life: Tragedy and the Posthuman - lecture delivered at Posthuman Antiquities: A Cross-Disciplinary Conference, New York University 14–15 November 2014
- Greek Tragedy in the Modern World - lecture delivered at the School of Advanced Study, University of London 8 March 2013
References
edit- ^ a b c "Miriam Leonard". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ Langdon, Julia (8 July 2021). "Dick Leonard obituary". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 8 July 2021. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
- ^ Miriam Leonard, "Irigaray's Cave: Feminist Theory and the Politics of French Classicism," Ramus, Volume 28, Issue 2 (1999), pp.152-168 {see 'Affiliations' section}.
- ^ Leonard, Miriam Anna (2002). Appropriations of antiquity in contemporary French thought (PhD). Cambridge University.
- ^ Zajko, Vanda; Leonard, Miriam (2006). Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199274383.
- ^ "Professor Miriam Leonard's inaugural lecture". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ a b Prince, Cashman Kerr (2008). "Review of: Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought. Classical Presences series, edited by Lorna Hardwick & James I. Porter". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN 1055-7660.
- ^ "Tragic Modernities — Miriam Leonard | Harvard University Press". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ "Leverhulme Grants 2011" (PDF). Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ "Philip Leverhulme Prize 2012" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 April 2018. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ Tragedy and Modernity, 7 November 2012, retrieved 20 August 2018
- ^ "2004 Events | U-M LSA Contexts for Classics". lsa.umich.edu. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ "Cris: Center for Religious and Inter-Religious Studies". humanities1.tau.ac.il. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ "Events Archive | Princeton Classics". classics.princeton.edu. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ "20th Annual Classical Studies Roberts Lecture". www.dickinson.edu. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ Kaplan, Drew. "Lecture Claims Societies Use Past to Guide Revolution". The Dickinsonian. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ "Tragic Modernities, by Miriam Leonard". Times Higher Education (THE). 20 August 2015. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ Levine, Steven Z. (2011). "Review of: Derrida and Antiquity. Classical Presences". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN 1055-7660.