About

Cleopatra narratives have been used to establish historical parallelism in discourses around powerful women, sex, gender, and foreignness. Whereas many of these discourses have been misogynistic and colonialist, Cleopatra stories provide a narrative space in which recuperative discussion of powerful foreign women and their place in the community can and has been taking place. Cleopatra has been used to explore issues of race and imperialism, abusive male relationships, sexuality and desire, beauty and media representation, Orientalism and exoticism, and female empowerment. Cleopatra has been a cipher through whom these social issues have been narrated. This PhD will focus on contemporary representations and debates, exploring recent recuperative narratives, and the power of historical and mythic narratives in community building. The project examines Cleopatra narratives as they function to form communities and police or, in recuperative forms, breakdown social boundaries. It innovates by embedding the sociological study of group formation through (mythical) narrative in the critical practices of Classical Reception Studies. Community engagement allows an ethnographic and experiential study of responses to the Cleopatra narrative  and will be delivered through the Royal Holloway Myth and Voice programme, a community storytelling initiative which has delivered workshops across London and the South-East to over 700 participants.