Helen Lovatt | |
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Nationality | British |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
Thesis | Games and realities in Statius, 'Thebaid 6' (2000) |
Doctoral advisor | J. G. W. Henderson |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classics |
Institutions | University of Nottingham |
Helen V. Lovatt is Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham. She is known in particular for her work on Latin epic literature especially from the Flavian period.[1]
Lovatt studied at Millfield and then read Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where she was awarded her PhD in 2000 with a dissertation on Games and realities in Statius, 'Thebaid 6'.[2] Lovatt lectured at Keele University before moving to a Junior Research Fellowship at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. In 2003 Lovatt joined the department of Classics at the University of Nottingham.[1] Lovatt delivered her inaugural lecture as Professor of Classics, Epic Journeys, on 15 February 2017.[3][4]
Lovatt's PhD work on the athletic games in Statius' Thebaid was published as Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the Thebaid (Cambridge University Press, 2005). In the book, Lovatt interpreted Statius' work as a microcosm of the whole epic tradition.[1] More recently, Lovatt has worked on the epic tradition in both Latin and Greek literature, publishing a book on vision in epic from Homer to Nonnus, The Epic Gaze: Vision, Gender and Narrative in Ancient Epic (Cambridge University Press, 2013)[5] and a co-edited work Epic Visions (Cambridge University Press, 2013) with Caroline Vout which resulted from a conference in Nottingham in 2003.[6]
Lovatt currently works on classical reception, particularly in detective and children's literature, resulting in her co-edited volume Classical Reception and Children's Literature: Greece, Rome and Childhood Transformation (I. B. Tauris, 2018) with Owen Hodkinson following a conference on the subject at the University of Wales, Lampeter in 2009.[1]