Holly Axford

Graduate Student

ha2694@columbia.edu

617D Hamilton Hall

Fall 2024 Office hours: Mondays 5-6p and Thursdays 4-5p and by appointment

Interests

• Women in ancient literature

• literary representations of ritual, magic, and witchcraft

• feminist theory; contemporary classical reception

• Greek tragedy

• Herodotus and empire

Holly is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Classics department. She received an MA in Classical Studies (2022) and an MLitt in Classics (2023) from the University of St Andrews. Her MLitt thesis explored the reception of rape narratives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in contemporary women’s myth retelling, arguing for the potentially subversive contribution of these myths in the hands of feminist writers to cultural discourse surrounding sexual assault and its representation in media.

Beyond reception studies, Holly’s main interests centre around the representation of women in ancient literature and in the intersection of classics and feminist theory. In particular, she is fascinated by depictions of women’s engagement with the supernatural world and the development of the ‘witch’ figure as a literary motif in both Greek and Latin literature. During her time at Columbia, she has developed an ongoing interest in historiography, primarily Herodotus’ Histories. Going forward, she hopes to continue to explore this area, with particular focus on the relationship between the acquisition of imperial power and the acquisition of geographical and cultural knowledge.