Dr Ruth Webb

Honorary Research Fellow 2001-
Ruth Webb is currently Professeur associé in the Department of Greek, Université de Paris X Nanterre

Contact

Email: r.webb@history.bbk.ac.uk

Publications

Books

• Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)
• Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham: Ashgate Press, 2009)

Articles and Chapters

• ‘La peur de la mimésis théâtrale dans l’Antiquité tardive’, La part de l’œil 23 (2008) (Special issue on La peur de l’image) 137-145
• ‘Behind the Mask: Pantomime from the Performer’s perspective’ in New Perspectives on Ancient Pantomime ed. E. Hall and R. Wiles (Oxford, 2008)
• ‘The model ekphraseis of Nikolaos the Sophist as Memory Images’ in  Theatron: rhetorische Kultur in Spätantike und Mittelalter ed. M. Grünbart (Berlin, 2007) 463-475
• ‘Basil of Caesarea and Greek Tragedy’ forthcoming in Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions ed. L. Harwick and C. Stray (Oxford, 2007)
• ‘Sex, Lies and Sophistic: Rhetoric and the Novel’ in Blackwell Companion to Greek Rhetoric ed. I. Worthington (Oxford, 2007) 526-541
• ‘Ekphrasis’ (1,000 words) and ‘Praise of Cities’ (600 words) forthcoming in The Classical Tradition ed. A. Grafton et al. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press)
• ‘Accomplishing the Picture: Ekphrasis, Mimesis and Martyrdom in Asterios of Amaseia’, in Art and Text in Byzantium, ed. L. James (New York, 2007) 13-32
• ‘Logiques du mime dans l’Antiquité Tardive’, Pallas, 71 (2006) 127-136
• ‘Rhetorical and Theatrical Fiction in Chorikios of Gaza’ in Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism, ed. S. Johnson (Aldershot, 2006) 107-124
• ‘The Imagines as a Fictional Text: ekphrasis, apat and illusion’ in Le défi de l’image: Philostrate, Callistrate et les énigmes de l’image sophistique, ed. M. Costanti et al. (Rennes, 2006) 113-136
• ‘Fiction, Mimesis and the Performance of the Greek Past in the Second Sophistic’, in Greeks on Greekness: Viewing the Greek Past under the Roman Empire, ed. D. Konstan and S. Sad (Cambridge, 2006) PCPS Supplementary Volume 29, 27-46
• ‘The Protean Performer: Mimesis and Identity in Late Antique Discussions of the Theater’, in Performing Ecstasies: Music, Dance, and Ritual in the Mediterranean ed. L. Del Giudice and Nancy Van Deusen (Ottowa, 2005) 3-11
• ‘Praise and Persuasion: argumentation and audience response in epideictic oratory’ in Rhetoric in Byzantium ed. E. Jeffreys (Aldershot, 2003) 127-135
• ‘Female Entertainers in Late Antiquity’ in Greek and Roman Actors ed. P.E. Easterling and E. Hall (Cambridge, 2002) 282-303
• ‘The Progymnasmata as Practice’ in Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity ed. Y.L. Too (Leiden, 2001) 289-316
• ‘Ekphrasis, Amplification and Persuasion in Prokopios' Buildings’ L'Antiquité tardive, 8 (2000) 67-71
• 'Picturing the Past: Uses of Ekphrasis in the Deipnosophistae' in Athenaeus and His World: reading Greek culture in the Roman empire, ed. D. Braund and J. Wilkins (Exeter University Press, 2000)
• 'The Aesthetics of Sacred Space: Narrative, Metaphor and Motion in Ekphraseis of Church Buildings' , Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 53 (1999) 59-74
• 'Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern: the invention of a genre', Word and Image, 15 (1999) 7-18
• 'Landscape' in A Guide to the Late Antique World, ed. G.W. Bowersock, P. Brown and O. Grabar (Cambridge, MA, 1999) 537-8
• Contribution to a discussion of Gibbon's treatment of Byzantium 'Taking a leaf from Gibbon', Dialogos: Hellenic Studies Review, 6 (1999) 144-7
• 'Rhetoric and Poetry' in Handbook on Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period (330B.C.-A.D.400), ed. S. Porter (Leiden, 1997) 339-69
• 'Salome's Sisters: the Rhetorics and Realities of Dance in Late Antiquity', in Men, Women and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium, ed. L. James (London, 1997) 119-48
• 'Imagination and the Arousal of the Emotions in Greco-Roman Rhetoric', in The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature, ed. S. Braund and C. Gill (Cambridge, 1997) 112-27
• 'Mémoire et imagination: les limites de l'enargeia dans la théorie rhétorique grecque' in Dire l'évidence, ed. C. Lévy and L. Pernot (Paris, 1997) 229-48
• 'The Form and Function of a Late Byzantine Commentary', in Medieval and Renaissance scholarship : proceedings of the second European Science Foundation Workshop on the Classical Tradition in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ed. N. Mann and B. Munk Olsen (Leiden, 1996)
• 'Ekphrasis' (2,000 words) in The Macmillan Dictionary of Art and Archaeology, London, 1996
• ‘A Slavish Art? Language and Grammar in Late Byzantine Education and Society', Dialogos: Hellenic Studies Review, 1 (1994) 81-103
• 'The Nomoi of Gemistos Plethon in the Light of Plato's Laws', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 52 (1989) 214-19
• With M. Koortbojian, 'Isbella d'Este's Philostratos', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 56 (1993)
• With P. Weller, articles on 'Descriptive Poetry' and 'Enargeia' in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton, 1993)
• With L. James, 'To Understand Ultimate Things and Enter Secret Places: Ekphrasis and Art in Byzantium', Art History, 14 (1991) 1-17

Reviews

• I. Rutherford, Canons of Style in the Antonine Age: Idea Theory in its Literary Context, Classical Philology 97 (2002) pp. 194ff.
• M. Patillon (trans. and comm.), Hermogne: L’art rhétorique, Rhetorica 2000
• F. Létoublon, Les lieux communs du roman, The Classical Review, n.s. 44,2, 1994, pp. 274-5
• P. Holliday (ed.), Narrative and event in Ancient Art,  Art Bulletin (March, 1996)
• A.S. Becker, The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis,  Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Fall, 1995)

Translation

• Contributor to a group translation into French of Dio Chrysostom’s Trojan Oration (Or. 11), Research Team THEMAM, Paris X

Recent Papers

• ‘Ancient Pantomime Performance’, Gulbenkian Seminar on Dance and Neuroscience, Sadlers Wells, London (November 2006)
• ‘Philostrate: entre l’image et la constitution du mythe’ Colloque ‘Mythe, Imaginaire, Fiction’ Paris X-ENS (September 2006)
• ‘La Decadanse: Dance and disturbance in Late Antiquity’, Greek Drama and Modern Dance, Archive of Pantomime from the Performer’s Perspective, Oxford (July, 2006)
• ‘Le jeu corporel de la pantomime antique’ Colloque ‘Le jeu du hors-texte’, Toulouse (May 2006)
• ‘Behind the Mask: Pantomime from the Performer’s Perspective’, Pantomime Day, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Oxford (July, 2005)
• ‘La peur de la mimsis théâtrale’ seminar in series on La Peur de l’Image, Université de Paris X-Nanterre (UMR 7041) (May 2005)
• ‘Teaching Rhetoric in Late Antiquity’, The Late Antique and Byzantine Classroom, ICS, London (April 2005)
• ‘Pagans and Christians on the Late Antique Stage’, Spring Symposium on Byzantine Studies, Belfast (April 2005)