Dr Justine McConnell

Dr Justine McConnell is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature (also affiliated with Classics). Her research focuses on the reception of Graeco-Roman epic and drama in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as well as on African diaspora literature and performance more widely. She is author of Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (OUP, 2013) and, with Fiona Macintosh, Performing Epic or Telling Tales (OUP, forthcoming 2020). She has co-edited four volumes: Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood (OUP, 2011); The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (OUP, 2015); Ancient Greek Myth and World Fiction since 1989 (Bloomsbury, 2016); and Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century (OUP, 2018).


Theatre and Performance Publications

‘“You had to wade this deep in blood?”: Violence and Madness in Derek Walcott’s The Odyssey’, Intertexts 16.1 (Spring 2012), 43-56.

‘Avant-Garde Epic: Robert Wilson’s Odyssey and the Experimental Turn’, Arion 21.1 (Spring/Summer 2013), 161-174.

‘“We are still mythical”: Kate Tempest’s Brand New Ancients’, Arion 22.1 (Spring / Summer 2014), 195-206.

The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas, co-edited with Kathryn Bosher, Fiona Macintosh, and Patrice Rankine.  Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015).

‘The Shock of Recognition: Nicholas Rudall’s Translation of Greek Drama for the Chicago Stage at Court Theatre’, co-authored with Patrice Rankine.  In Bosher, Macintosh, McConnell, and Rankine, The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (2015), 764-772.

‘Staging the Haitian Revolution in London: Britain, the West Indies, and C.L.R. James’ Toussaint Louverture’, in Henry Stead and Edith Hall (eds.), Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform. London: Bloomsbury (2015), 256-268.

‘Epic Parodies: Martial Extravaganzas on the Nineteenth-Century Stage’, in Anastasia Bakogianni and Valerie Hope (eds.), War as Spectacle.  London: Bloomsbury (2015), 257-269.

Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century, co-edited with Fiona Macintosh, Stephen Harrison, and Claire Kenward.  Oxford: Oxford University Press (2018).

‘Performing Walcott, Performing Homer: Omeros on Stage and Screen’, in Macintosh, McConnell, Harrison, and Kenward, Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century (2018), 404-417.

Performing Epic or Telling Tales, co-authored with Fiona Macintosh.  Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2020).

‘The Contest between Créolité and Classics in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Stage Plays’, in Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos Nikoloutsos (eds.), Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage.  Bloomsbury (forthcoming 2020).


Performance-Related Events

Academic Consultant for the Almeida’s Odyssey in 2015: https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/the-odyssey/12-nov-2015 

Talk at National Theatre with Dr Lucy Jackson: ‘How Many Stories in the World?’ – in relation to Annie Baker’s Antipodes (November 2019): https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/how-many-stories-world