Jocasta* is a multilateral research project which aims to promote Classical Reception in Greece as part of an intertwined world. It conceives Reception not as a subdivision of Classics but as a mode of historicised inquiry and constant self-critique intrinsic in Classical Studies. In this respect, it ascribes to the reader the role of the decoder who examines reception of the ancient world from the 8th century BC onwards: from Antiquity to Byzantium, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Early and Late Modernity and the future, while ceaselessly moving from the West to the East and from the North to the South and vice versa. It explores Classical Reception through a variety of media ranging from literature to theatre and film to materialised configurations of everyday experience and through a plurality of approaches ranging from Philosophy to Cultural and Social Studies to Performative arts and Science-driven discourses, thus foregrounding interdisciplinary research.
Based at the University of Patras, Greece, Jocasta has a threefold aim:
- To build a Network which facilitates the dialogue between the academic and the artistic milieu allowing for mutual exchange of perspectives and encouraging interdisciplinary and transnational collaborations between people and departments in the field of Classical Reception Studies.
- To host an Archive and a Database for the documentation, preservation and research of Modern Greek cinematic, theatrical, literary and multimedia receptions of Classics in the 21st century.
- To launch a Research Center for the study of Classics in the Future. Classics in the Future is not only conceptualised in the chronological dimension of the attribute but also, and more importantly, denotes Classics as Classics yet to come, as a multifaceted and elliptical corpus of texts always in the becoming, always susceptible to constant configuration.
Efimia Karakantza and Efstathia Athanasopoulou