Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

You are here

  1. Home
  2. Dr Fiona Hobden

Dr Fiona Hobden

Profile summary

  • Regional Academic Staff
  • Staff Tutor and Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Arts & Humanities
  • Classical Studies
  • fiona.hobden

Professional biography

On joining the Open University in September 2022, I also returned to Scotland, where I completed my degrees at the University of St Andrews, graduating with a PhD Ancient History in 2003.  The intervening years were spent in the University of Liverpool's Department of Archaeology, Classics & Egyptology, where my teaching and research ranged across topics in ancient Greek culture, society, politics and history and the reception of classical antiquity.  I particularly value the opportunities that my new role as Staff Tutor in Classical Studies brings to engage people from all backgrounds with the richness and diversity of human experience, past and present.

 

Research interests

My research circles around two interrelated questions, namely how did people living in classical antiquity think about and experience their world, and how does telling stories about classical antiquity help us to think about and experience ours.

Past projects have explored the use of inscriptional monuments in discussions of democracy and revolution; psycho-sociological, ethnographic, political, philosophical and religious aspects of the ancient Greek drinking party (e.g. The Symposion in Ancient Greek Society & Thought, 2013); the aesthetics, rhetorics and ideological strategies of television documentaries about classical antiquity (e.g. Ancient Greece on British Television, 2018, co-edited with Amanda Wrigley); and the moral and political ideas of the Athenian writer Xenophon (e.g. Xenophon, 2020).  Recent areas for investigation have included the ethnographic 'edginess' of Anacharsis; experiences of invasion in Xenophon’s Anabasis; and the gendering of television antiquities.

My current research investigates physical, social and emotional dimensions of growing old in ancient Greece, building upon perspectives drawn from cultural gerontology, disability studies, sociology and wellbeing studies to examine (for example) issues of inclusion/exclusion, ageing as disablement, the intersection between aesthetic and social transformations, and communities of care.  

  • (forthcoming) 'Experiences of ageing in antiquity: voices and visions', in T. Parkin and D. Troyansky, Cultural History of Old Age in Antiquity (ca. 800 BCE - 500 CE), London: Bloomsbury.
  • (forthcoming) 'Crossing cultures: Anacharsis and other Scythians in Herodotus' Histories', in P. Langford and M. Perale (eds), The Legend of Anacharsis in Antiquity and Modernity, Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • (forthcoming) 'The impacts and ethics of invasion in Xenophon's Anabasis', in F. Hobden, C. J. Tuplin and A.Zadorozhny (eds), Xenophon the Historian: Historiography, Historical Experience and the Uses of History, Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • (forthcoming) 'Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome (2013): a feminist turn?', in M. Wyke and M. Wozniak (eds), Ancient Roman Women in Screen Media, London: Bloomsbury.

I am co-editor with Dr Joanna Paul of the journal New Voices in Classical Reception Studies.

Teaching interests

I am involved in the modules A112 Cultures, A229 Exploring the Classical World and A864 MA Classical Studies Part 2.

Publications

[Book Review] Xenophon and the Athenian Democracy: The Education of an Elite Citizenry, written by Matthew R. Christ (2023)
Hobden, Fiona
Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 40(1) (pp. 175-178)

Redirecting the gaze: the woman and the gladiator on television in the twenty-first century (2020)
Hobden, Fiona and Potter, Amanda
New Voices in Classical Reception Studies. Conference Proceedings Volume Two, Article 3

Making leaders great again? Xenophon on leadership (2020)
Hobden, Fiona
Omnibus, 79

From philosophy to psychotherapy: retelling the story in Jeanette Winterson's Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005) (2016)
Hobden, Fiona
New Voices in Classical Reception Studies(11) (pp. 16-31)

Presenting the past: authenticity and authority in Athens: The Truth about Democracy (Lion TV, 2007) (2013-01)
Hobden, Fiona
Classical Receptions Journal, 5(1) (pp. 1-37)

Introduction (2013)
Hobden, Fiona and Kempf, Damien
Envisioning Landscapes: Adaptation & Renewal/Special Issue of Cultural History, 2(2) (pp. 125-132)

The archaeological aesthetic in ancient world documentary (2013)
Hobden, Fiona
Media, Culture & Society, 35(3) (pp. 366-381)

Did Euphiletus murder Eratosthenes? (2010)
Hobden, Fiona
Omnibus, 59 (pp. 11-13)

History meets fiction in Doctor Who, 'The Fires of Pompeii': a BBC reception of ancient Rome on screen and online (2009-10)
Hobden, Fiona
Greece & Rome, 56(2) (pp. 147-163)

Imagining past and present: a rhetorical strategy in Aeschines 3, "Against Ctesiphon" (2007-12)
Hobden, Fiona
Classical Quarterly, 57(2) (pp. 490-501)

The 'Men from Phyle' from agora to agôn: the rhetorical life of Athens' democratic counterrevolutionaries (2007)
Hobden, Fiona
Advances in the History of Rhetoric, 10 (pp. 151-174)

Reading Xenophon's Symposium (2005)
Hobden, Fiona
Ramus, 34(2) (pp. 93-111)

How to be a good symposiast and other lessons from Xenophon's Symposium (2004)
Hobden, Fiona
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 50 (pp. 121-140)

Xenophon (2020-11-12)
Hobden, Fiona
Ancients in Action
ISBN : 9781474298483 | Publisher : Bloomsbury Academic | Published : London

The Symposion in Ancient Greek Society and Thought (2013-03)
Hobden, Fiona
ISBN : 9781316613733 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

The trouble with Xenophon: marching with the Ten Thousand in 21st-century fiction (2024)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Farrell, C and Gish, D eds. Brill's Companion to the Reception of Xenophon
Publisher : Brill (In press)

Travels with Odysseus and the Odyssey in twenty-first-century television documentaries (2021)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Potter, Amanda and Gardner, Hunter eds. Ancient Epic in Film and Television. Screening Antiquity (pp. 135-151)
ISBN : 9781474473743 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

Spartacus: Blood and Sand (STARZ, 2010): a necessary fiction? (2019-12-13)
Hobden, Fiona
In: van Helden, Daniël and Witcher, Robert eds. Researching the Archaeological Past through Imagined Narratives: A Necessary Fiction. Routledge Studies in Archaeology (pp. 238-254)
ISBN : 978-1-138-30363-8 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon, Oxon

Broadcasting Greece: an introduction to Greek antiquity on the small screen (2018-05)
Hobden, Fiona and Wrigley, Amanda
In: Hobden, Fiona and Wrigley, Amanda eds. Ancient Greece on British Television. Screening Antiquity (pp. 1-23)
ISBN : 9781474454650 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

Are We the Greeks? Understanding Antiquity and Ourselves in Television Documentaries (2018-05)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Hobden, Fiona and Wrigley, Amanda eds. Ancient Greece on British Television. Screening Antiquity (pp. 24-43)
ISBN : 9781474412599 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

Augustus and the politics of the past today in television documentaries (2018-04)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Goodman, Penelope ed. Afterlives of Augustus, AD 14 - 2014 (pp. 294-321)
ISBN : 978-1108423687 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Ancient world documentaries (2017-08)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Pomeroy, Arthur ed. A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World (pp. 491-514)
ISBN : 978-1-118-74135-1 | Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell | Published : Oxford

Between media and genres: Pompeii and the construction of historical knowledge on British television today (2016)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Sabban, Annette and Jaki, Sylvia eds. Wissenformate in den Medien: Analysen aus Medienlinguistik und Medienwissenschaft. Kulturen – Kommunikation – Kontakte (25) (pp. 119-138)
ISBN : 978-3732902019 | Publisher : Frank & Timme | Published : Berlin

Xenophon's Oeconomicus (2016)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Flower, Michael A. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon (pp. 152-173)
ISBN : 978-1107652156 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Andron (2014)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Smith, Claire ed. Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (pp. 243-247)
ISBN : 9781441904263 | Publisher : Springer | Published : New York, NY

Symposion (2014)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Smith, Claire ed. Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (pp. 7189-7193)
ISBN : 9781441904263 | Publisher : Springer | Published : New York, NY

Introduction (2012-08-28)
Hobden, Fiona and Tuplin, Christopher
In: Hobden, Fiona and Tuplin, Christopher eds. Xenophon: Ethical Principles and Historical Enquiry. Mnemosyne, Supplements, History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity (pp. 1-41)
ISBN : 9789004224377 | Publisher : Brill | Published : Leiden

Enter The Divine: Sympotic Performance And Religious Experience (2011-06-22)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Lardinois, André; Blok, Josine and Van Der Poel, Marc eds. Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion. Orality and Literature in the Ancient World, vol. 8.. Mnemosyne, Supplements. (pp. 37-58)
ISBN : 9789004194120 | Publisher : Brill | Published : Leiden

The Politics of the Sumposion (2009-08-20)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Graziosi, Barbara; Vasunia, Phiroze and Boys-Stones, George eds. The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies (pp. 271-280)
ISBN : 9780199286140 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford

Symposion and the rhetorics of commensality in Demosthenes 19, On the False Embassy (2009)
Hobden, Fiona
In: Mann, Christian; Haake, Matthias and von den Hoff, Ralf eds. Rollenbilder in der athenischen Demokratie: Medien, Gruppen, Räume im politischen und sozialen System (pp. 71-87)
ISBN : 9783895007125 | Publisher : Reichert Verlagen | Published : Wiesbaden

Ancient Greece on British Television (2018-05)
Hobden, Fiona and Wrigley, Amanda eds.
Screening Antiquity
ISBN : 9781474454650 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

Envisioning Landscapes: Adaptation & Renewal (2013)
Hobden, Fiona and Kempf, Damien eds.
Special Issue of Cultural History, volume 2.2
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

Xenophon: Ethical Principles and Historical Inquiry (2012-08-28)
Hobden, Fiona and Tuplin, Christopher eds.
Mnemosyne, Supplements, History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity
ISBN : 9789004224377 | Publisher : Brill | Published : Leiden