Barbara Goff
Barbara Elizabeth Goff is a Classics Professor at the University of Reading. She is well known for her contribution to the classics world in relation to her interests in Greek tragedy and its reception; women in antiquity; postcolonial classics and reception of Greek political thought.
Education
Goff undertook her undergraduate degree at King's College Cambridge. She later completed her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley on Euripides' Hippolytus supervised by Donald Mastronade, publishing the work as The Noose of Words: Readings of Desire, Violence and Language in Euripides' Hippolytus in 1990.Career
After her first job as a Junior Research Fellow at Kings College Cambridge, Goff has worked in different institutions all over the world including theUniversity of Texas at Austin, during which time Goff held a Solmsen Fellowship at the Institute for Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Goff moved to the University of Reading first as a Reader in Classics, subsequently becoming Professor of Classics. She leads modules focusing on ancient drama, ancient Greek language, ancient sport, and sexuality and gender in the ancient world.
Goff's work on classical reception has led to lectures and publications on classical education and reception in west Africa, including participation in the founding of the Classical Association of Ghana in 2018.
Research groups and centres
At the University of Reading Goff is a member of the Ancient Literature and Classical Tradition and Reception groups in the Department of Classics.Goff is a member of the Ancient and Modern Imperialisms Network, based in Reading and helps to run the Legacy of Greek Political Thought Network, based in Reading, and is an executive committee member of the Classical Reception Studies Network, based at the Open University.
Goff is on the international editorial boards of the Classical Receptions Journal and of Elektra and is on the Advisory Board of the AHRC project 'Classics and Class', based in King's College London. She also works with the Iris Project to promote classical education.
Publications
Books
- Goff, B. The Noose of Words: Readings of Desire, Violence and Language in Euripides' Hippolytus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Goff, B. History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama
- Goff, B. Citizen Bacchae: women's ritual practice in ancient Greece. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles
- Goff, B. Classics and Colonialism. Bloomsbury.
- Goff, B. and Simpson, M. Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone and dramas of the African Diaspora. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Goff, B. Euripides: Trojan Women. Duckworth companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy. Duckworth, London.
- Goff, B.
'Your secret language': classics in the British colonies of West Africa. Classical Diaspora. Bloomsbury Academic, London. Articles
- Goff, B. Dionysiac triangles: the politics of culture in Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides. In: Pedrick, V. and Oberhelman, S. The soul of Tragedy: essays on ancient Athenian drama and its contexts. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 73–88.
- Goff, B. E. Antigone's Boat: the colonial and the postcolonial in "Tegonni: an African Antigone" by Femi Osofisan. In: Adeyemi, S. Portraits for an eagle: essays in honour of Femi Osofisan. Bayreuth African Studies, Germany, pp. 111–121.
- Goff, B. E. Classical subjects and modern subjectivities: introduction. Helios, 34. pp. 121–123. ISSN 1935-0228
- Goff, B. Antigone's boat: the colonial and the postcolonial in Tegonni: an African Antigone, by Femi Osofisan. In: Hardwick, L. and Gillespie, C. Classics in postcolonial worlds. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 40–53.
- Goff, B. Improvising on the Athenian stage: women's ritual practices in drama. In: Parca, M. and Tzanetou, A. Finding Persephone: women's rituals in the ancient Mediterranean. Studies in ancient folklore and popular culture. Indiana University Press, Indianapolis, pp. 79–91.
- Goff, B. The priestess of Athena grows a beard: latent citizenship in Ancient Greek women's ritual practice. In: Pollock, G. and Turvey-Sauron, V. The sacred and the feminine: imagination and sexual difference. New encounters: arts, cultures, concepts. I B Tauris & Co. Ltd, London, pp. 49–60.
- Goff, B. E. Sons of the shield: paternal arms in epic and tragedy. In: Mitsis, P. and Tsagalis, C. Allusion, authority, and truth: critical perspectives on Greek poetic and rhetorical praxis. De Gruyter, Berlin, Germany and New York City, pp. 219–233.
- Goff, B. Response to Tzanetou and Vinh. In: Carter, D. Why Athens? a reappraisal of tragic politics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 345–349.
- Goff, B. and Simpson, M. Voice from the Black Box: Sylvain Bemba's 'Black Wedding Candles for Blessed Antigone'. In: Mee, E. B. and Foley, H. P. Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage. Classical Presences. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 324–343.
- Goff, B. Thinking the Olympics: the classical tradition and the modern Games. In: Goff, B. and Simpson, M. Thinking the Olympics: the classical tradition and the modern Games. Bloomsbury/Bristol Classical Press, London, pp. 1–19. doi: 10.5040/9781849667074
- Goff, B. Classics in West African education: the rhetoric of colonial commissions. In: Hardwick, L. and Harrison, S. Classics in the Modern World: a 'democratic turn'? Classical Presences. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 157–170.
- Goff, B. Ode to sport: poetry and the revived Olympics. Glits-e: a journal of criticism, 3.
- Goff, B. Postcolonial translation: theory and practice. In: Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics.Brill, Leiden, pp. 122–125.
- Goff, B. and Simpson, M. New worlds, old dreams? Postcolonial theory and reception of Greek drama. In: Bosher, K., Macintosh, F., McConnell, J. and Rankine, P. The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 30–50. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199661305.013.00
- Goff, B. The Greeks of the WEA.: realities and rhetoric's in the first two decades. In: Stead, H. and Hall, E. Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform. Bloomsbury, London, pp. 216–234.
- Goff, B. and Leonard, M. Introduction: the legacy of Greek political thought. Classical Receptions Journal, 8.pp. 1–10. ISSN 1759-5142 doi: 10.1093/crj/clv012
- Goff, B. All aboard the Bacchae bus: reception of Euripides in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In: McClure, L. K. A companion to Euripides.Wiley Blackwell, Malden MA, pp. 565–582.
- Goff, B. The leopard-skin of Heracles: traditional wisdom and untraditional madness in a Ghanaian Alcestis. In: Kyriakou, P. and Rengakos, A. Wisdom and Folly in Euripides. Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes 31. De Gruyter, pp. 347–364.
- Goff, B. The reception of Greek drama on Africa: ‘A Tradition That Intends To Be Established’. In: Van Zyl Smit, B. Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Goff, B. Another Oedipus: Leloup's Guéidô. In: Pestell, B., Palazzolo, P. and Burnett, L. Translating Myth. Legenda, Oxford.