Dr Laura Jansen

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My research emerges at the intersections of classical, comparative and hybrid literatures. I work on ancient Greek and Latin languages and literature, with a focus on less overt traditions of antiquity in 20th- and 21st-century artistic thought (esp. Argentine, Canadian, French, Greek and Italian).

I am the author of Borges' Classics: Global Encounters with the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge, 2018, funded by the Leverhulme Trust), and volume editor of Anne Carson's Euripides: Takes on H of H Playbook (2021) and The Trojan Women (2021) (in press, Classical Antiquity 42:2, 2023), Anne Carson/ Antiquity (Bloomsbury, 2021) and The Roman Paratext: Frame, Texts, Readers (Cambridge, 2014). My next edited collection, Susan Sontag's Tangential Classics (OUP, Classical Presences), is forthcoming in 2024.

I am currently completing a second monograph, on Indisiciplinary Classics: Anne Carson's Writings on Antiquity (for CUP), and undertaking research for a third monograph, on Hellenic Absences: Modern Archives of Erasure, Forgetfulness and Loss (for Classical Memories/ Modern Identities, OSUP).

I am also general editor of the monograph series Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing (Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Literary Studies blog). 

Before arriving at Bristol in 2013, I held postdoctoral positions at St Andrews, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.

Fellowships and grants

2022-23– Research Fellowship, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard 
2022-23 – University Research Fellowship, Bristol
2022 – Visiting Scholar, Stanford University (Fall Term)
2021-23 – British Academy Small Grant 
2019 – Visiting Research Grant, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard 
2016 – Visiting Grant, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard
2015-16 – Leverhulme Research Fellowship 
2015-16 – Visiting Fellowship, Princeton

Editorial activities and other projects

During 2015-20, I was associate editor of the Diccionario hispánico de la tradición clásica (DHTC, ed. Francisco García Jurado) and collaborating member of Princeton's Postclassicisms network. Between 2014-2019, I led the IGRCT's Postgraduate Reading Groups on Twentieth-Century authors (Borges 2014; Calvino 2017; Walcott 2018; Anne Carson 2019; and Susan Sontag 2020). 

I regularly organise and lead public events:

•  Finding the Edge: The Writings of Anne Carson: an in-conversation event with poet Alice Oswald and Rebecca Kosick (Modern Languages, Bristol) at Spike Island Studios.  November 2019 (see article in Epigram).  
• Translation as Poetry/ Poetry as Translation: an international event to launch my colleague and friend Rebecca Kosick's new book of poetry Labor Day. January 2020.
• 'Modern Odysseys': a book event in conversation with Michelle Zerba, author Modern Odysseys: Cavafy, Woolf, Césaire and a Poetics of Indirection, and Richard Armstrong, Casey Dué, Laura Jansen, Patrice Rankine and Adam Lecznar. Center of Hellenic Studies, Harvard. 10 March 2022. 
• Anne Carson's Euripides: Eight Takes on Trojan Women (2021) and H of H (2021), coorganised with Mario Telò (Berkeley) and Sarah Nooter (Chicago), April 21, 2022.
• "Volcanos and Myth: an Essay on the Paintings of Ragnhild Nes" (SARP 2022/23 catalogue). I am pleased to have been invited to contribute a creative essay for a catalogue of the paintings of Norwegian artist Ragnhild Nes, 2022/23 artist-in-residence at the Palazzo Previtera, Etna, Sicily. Ragnhild Nes' volcanic landscapes emerge in close dialogue with the writings of Anne Carson in ways that both illuminate and bring a new understanding to the Canadian poet's oeuvre.The catalogue is produced by Alfio A. Puglisi, Artistic Director of SARP.

Undergraduate Teaching

My undergraduate teaching includes a range of courses on Greek and Latin language and literature, poetry and philosophy, and the history of ideas. I teach a new, popular course on 'Philosophies of Eros', which invites students to explore desire as a form of wisdom and a cultural construction from Greek poetry and philosophy to the writings of George Bataille, Marguerite Duras, Pablo Neruda, James Baldwin, Zen buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, and Anne Carson. I have recently directed undergraduate dissertations on Lucretius and politics, Lucretius and media theory, Page Du Bois and Sappho, 'presentness' in Horace's Odes, and spatiality in archaic Greek lyric. I regularly direct three units:

• Greek C/D2 – Archaic Greek Lyric: poetics, philosophy, desire, and politics 
• Greek B2 – Sophocles' Antigone
• Philosophies of Eros: Ancient and Modern

In 2018-19, I was shortlisted for the Bristol student-led award for the Outstanding Teaching in the Faculty of Arts

Postgraduate Studies

I was Postgraduate Research Director for the School of Humanities (2020-22) and have supervised serveral theses in the past few years. I currently direct PhD theses on "Anne Carson's Classical Crossings: Paratexts, Visuality, Materiality" (Eugenia Nicolaci) and "Archaic Desire in Posthumanist Instalation Art" (1980-2021) (Katie Thorpe ).

I welcome projects on Greek and/or Latin literature in connection with my areas of research, in particular those relating to antiquity and:

• Comparative modernisms
• 20th and 21st century writing
• Global Literatures
• Speculative Fiction
• Scientific Thought

Contact Information

11 Woodland Road, Room B41

University of Bristol, Bristol. BS81TB

laura.jansen@bristol.ac.uk