Dr Sophie Bocksberger

bocksberger sophie
Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature
Brasenose College
sophie.bocksberger@classics.ox.ac.uk

Qualifications: BA, MA, DPhil Oxford

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0303-8229

Link to college page: Dr Sophie Bocksberger - Brasenose College, Oxford
 

 

Academic Background

I am a scholar of archaic and classical Greek literature, with interests that extend into Latin poetry. I studied at the University of Lausanne (BA, MA) and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, before completing my DPhil at Oxford. I have held a Swiss National Science Foundation fellowship at the University of Sydney and a Humboldt Fellowship at the Freie Universität Berlin. My research brings together close philological reading and contextual approaches, focusing on two areas in particular: the reception of myth and the reconstruction of ancient dance theory within Greek cultural and intellectual history.

Research Interests

My research develops along two strands:

  • Myth and reception. My first book, Telamonian Ajax: The Myth in Archaic and Classical Greece (OUP, 2022), traces the evolution of Ajax’s figure between the late eighth and the fourth centuries BCE across literature and visual culture, showing how historical, political, and religious contexts shaped his reception. In addition to Homer, Pindar, Bacchylides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, I have explored further aspects of the reception of his myth in my paper “Pre-Homeric Ajax” and "the Hoplôn Crisis and Ovidian Aesthetics". 
     
  • Ancient dance theory. I reconstruct how the Greeks understood dance as a medium of expression by analysing its technical vocabulary across poetry, prose, and performance. Preliminary studies such as “Dance in Antiquity: An Outline of a General Theory” (Gaia) and “Narrative Dance: imitating ēthos and pathos through schêmata” establish the groundwork for a monograph that will set out an ancient theory of dance and its implications for drama, rhetoric, and philosophy.
Research Keywords

Greek Literature, Latin poetry

Teaching

I teach most Greek and Latin literature papers.

Publications

Full Publications: Dr Sophie Bocksberger October 2025

Selected Publications:

Forthcoming

“Dance in Language and Literature,” in A Cultural History of Dance (Bloomsbury).
“L’emploi du mot schêma dans le théâtre d’Aristophane,” in Corps acteur dans le théâtre grec antique, Cahiers du Théâtre Antique (CTA).

Monograph

Telamonian Ajax: The Myth in Archaic and Classical Greece, Oxford (2021). .

Articles & chapters

“Dance in Antiquity: An Outline of a General Theory.” Gaia 28, 2025. Online since 10 July 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/gaia/5775.

“Pre-Homeric Ajax.” In Polytropos Ajax: Roots, Evolution, and Reception of a Multifaceted Hero, ed. S. Speriani & S. Harrison. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2024, 27–44. doi:10.1515/9783111450469-003.

« The Hoplôn Crisis and Ovidian Aesthetics », in Hommage entre chien et loup à Martin Steinrück, 2024, 289-95.

“Narrative Dance: imitating ēthos and pathos through schēmata.” In Choreonarratives, ed. L. Gianvittorio & K. Schlapbach. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021.

“Dancing Little Bears.” In Religion and Education in the Ancient Greek World, ed. I. Salvo & T. Scheer. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021.

“Dance as Silent Poetry, Poetry as Speaking Dance: the Poetics of Orchesis.” In Choreutika: Performing Dance in Archaic and Classical Greece, ed. L. Gianvittorio. 2017, 159–174.

“The Reception of the Orestes Myth in Sophocles’ Electra.” Lexis 30 (2012).

Editions / papyrology

“5266. Sophocles, Philoctetes 104–7, 109–32, 151, 155–81” (with C. Meccariello), in J. H. Brusuelas & C. Meccariello (eds.), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri LXXXI (Graeco-Roman Memoirs 101). London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2016, 52–57.

APGRD talk (2023): https://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/events/2023/05/performance-in-antiquity