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I teach a course on Greek Mythology on Film and Television with the UK charity the Brilliant Club. You can find out more about this from my Classical Reception Studies Network blog post:
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/CRSN/?p=229
If you are interested in the work of the Brilliant Club more generally, see:
I am currently a Visiting Fellow with the Open University, where I was awarded my PhD in 2014 for my thesis on viewer reception of classical myth on television. Prior to this I completed my first degree and MA in humanities at the Open University, specialising in English and classical literature. I was the recipient of the AOUG Chancellor Asa Briggs Award for Arts in 2013 for my research.
I am a contributor to the Roehampton arm of the ‘Our Mythical Childhood’ research project. For more information on this international project on children’s culture and the classics see
http://www.omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/
I am also a member of the Membership and Outreach Committee for Antiquity in Media Studies (AIMS).
If you would like to get in touch you can find my contact details via my Open University homepage
Dr Amanda Potter | OU people profiles (open.ac.uk)
Books:
2021 Forthcoming, with Hunter H. Gardner, Ancient Epic in Film and Television, Edinburgh University Press.
Articles:
2020 'Bringing Classical Monsters to Life on BBC Children’s Television: Gorgons, Minotaurs and Sirens in Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Atlantis' in Chasing Mythical Beasts: The Reception of Ancient Monsters in Children's and Young Adult's Culture edited by Katarzyna Marciniak, Heidelberg: Winter Heidelberg, pp. 521-538.
2020 with Fiona Hobden. 'Redirecting the gaze: The Woman and the Gladiator on Television in the Twenty-First Century' , New Voices in Classical Reception Studies, Conference Proceedings volume 2
2018 ‘Feminist heroines for our times: Screening the Amazon Warrior in Wonder Woman (1975-1979), Xena: Warrior Princess (1996-2001) and Wonder Woman (2017), Thersites, 7.
Thersites 7/2018
2018 ‘Sons of Anarchy’ in Television Finales from Howdy Doody to Girls edited by Douglas Howard and David Bianculli, New York: Syracuse University Press, pp. 345-351.
2018 ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ in Television Finales from Howdy Doody to Girls edited by Douglas Howard and David Bianculli, New York: Syracuse University Press, pp. 454-459.
2018, with Tania Evans, ‘Sacrificial Shadows: Tragic Greek Heroines Reinvented for Television in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Game of Thrones’ in Locating Classical Receptions on Screen: Masks, Echoes, Shadows edited by Ricardo Apostol and Anastasia Bakogianni, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43-65.
2018 ‘Greek Myth in the Whoniverse’ in Ancient Greece on British Television edited by Fiona Hobden and Amanda Wrigley, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 168-186.
2018 ‘The Changing Faces of Heroism in Atlantis (2013-15)’ in Epic Heroes on Screen edited by Antony Augoustakis and Stacie Raucci, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 125-140.
2017 ‘ “Atalanta Just Married”: A Case Study on Greek Mythology-Based Fan Fiction’ in Rewriting the Ancient World: Greeks, Romans and Christians in Modern Popular Fiction edited by Lisa Maurice, Leiden: Brill, pp. 131-149.
2016 ‘Fan reactions to Nagron as One True Pairing’ in Starz Spartacus: Reimagining an Icon on Screen edited by Antony Augoustakis and Monica S. Cyrino, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 161-172.
2016, with Hunter H. Gardner, ‘Violence and Voyeurism in the Arena’ in Starz Spartacus: Reimagining an Icon on Screen edited by Antony Augoustakis and Monica S. Cyrino, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 211-228.
2016 ‘Classical monsters in new Doctor Who fan fiction’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 21.
Classical monsters in new Doctor Who fan fiction
2015 ‘Slashing Rome: Season Two Rewritten in Online Fan Fiction’ in Rome Season Two: Trial and Triumph edited by Monica S. Cyrino, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 219-230.
2010 ‘Beware of Geeks Appropriating Greeks: Viewer Reception of the Myth of Philoctetes in Torchwood’ in Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things: Cultural Perspectives on Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures, edited by Ross P. Garner, Melissa Beattie and Una McCormack, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 79-93.
2010 ‘Unpacking Pandora’s Box: The redemption of an ancient anti-heroine for a twenty-first century audience in US TV Series Xena: Warrior Princess and Charmed’ in Classical and Contemporary Mythic Identities: Construction of the Literary Imagination, edited by Aminal Ayal and Paul Hardwick, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, pp. 97–122.
2010 ‘Who needs a Homeric hero when we’ve got Xena?: The confusion of gendered roles in Xena: Warrior Princess episodes “Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts” and “Ulysses”’, Rosetta 8.5, 96-126.
Who needs a Homeric hero when we’ve got Xena?
2009 ‘Hell Hath No Fury Like a Dissatisfied Viewer: Audience Responses to the Presentation of the Furies in Xena: Warrior Princess and Charmed’ in Classics for All: Reworking Antiquity in Mass Culture, edited by Dunstan Lowe and Kim Shahabudin, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 217-236.
Book Reviews:
2021 'Ovid and Cinema' review of M. M. Winkler's Ovid on Screen: A Montage of Attractions (2020) The Classical Review.
2020 'Review of Meredith E. Safran (ed.): Screening the Golden Ages of the Classical Tradition (2019) Thersites, 12.
2018 ‘Ben Hur: Lew Wallace’s Novel and its Extensive Afterlife’ review of Jon Solomon’s Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster (2014) The Classical Review, 68.1, pp. 283-285.
I participated in the first 2012-2013 Communicating Ancient Greece and Rome programme, administered by the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at the University of Oxford, aimed at encouraging scholars to get more involved in public engagement activity. Following on from this programme I delivered a public lecture at the Royal Theatre Northampton and am continuing to deliver public lectures and introduce films, for example at the Petrie Museum, UCL and the LSE Library, obtaining viewer feedback at these events to build into my research.
For details of talks and conference papers please see my academia.edu pages at
https://open.academia.edu/AmandaPotter
My main research interest is public engagement with the classics, including viewer (or audience) reception of the classics in popular film and television, and creative engagement with classical myth. Modern texts I have worked on include Xena: Warrior Princess, Charmed, Torchwood, Doctor Who, HBO Rome. Starz Spartacus, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, BBC Atlantis and Game of Thrones. I am also interested in classics and feminism, and receptions of classical myth and literature focussing on female characters. Recently I have been working on the intersection between creative writing and classics, and classics and comics and animated films.
I am currently working on a volume for the EUP Screening Antiquity series, entitled Ancient Epic in Film and Television, which I am co-editing with Hunter Gardner from USC. Target date for publication December 2021.
