School of Historical Studies Centre for Classics & Archaeology

Dr K.O. Chong-Gossard

Senior Lecturer

Telephone:
(+61 3) 8344 4078
Email:
koc@unimelb.edu.au
Fax:
(+61 3) 8344 4161
Location:
Room 133, Old Quadrangle
The University of Melbourne VIC 3010

Academic Profile (click on the link for more information)

Biography
Research
Publications

Biography

K.O. was born in the USA in Pennsylvania and raised in Ohio, went to grad school in Michigan, and taught at Kalamazoo College before moving to the southern hemisphere in 2001. Like many of his colleagues in Classics, foreign languages has always been his favourite hobby; in addition to Latin and Ancient Greek, he has pursued German, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Literary Chinese, Russian, and would love to master Biblical Hebrew. He has a black cat named Oscar; he has a passion for opera (especially Handel and Mozart); he plays the violin and viola; he collects teddy bears (over 250 are in his office!); he adores chocolate; he has a fondness for re-runs of Dark Shadows (that late 1960's American soap opera about the vampire); and he's over 1.9 metres tall. He is also a genealogist and has published books on his Chinese American family in Hawaii.

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Research

K.O.'s main interest is Greek tragedy, specifically the gendered use of language in Euripides. Other interests include gender theory, Senecan drama, Roman prosopography, and Latin and Ancient Greek pedagogy.

Current projects:

Public and Private Lies: Retelling the clash of duty, power and sexual indulgence in the Roman imperial court.
Type of Project: ARC-DP (Funded 2005 - 2008)
Collaborators: Australian Postdoctoral (APD) Fellow Dr Andrew J Turner (University of Melbourne)
Brief Description: The best accounts of the first-century Roman imperial court date from 100-130 CE and depict the deleterious effect of private acts on public conduct. The project explores how the interests of the authors Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal were characteristic of their own generation rather than those described by their texts. We examine literary issues (genre, reception, Hellenistic influences) and cultural concerns (moral philosophy, gender politics, sexual deviance) to discover these authors' contemporaneous viewpoints.

Consolation in Greek Tragedy
Type of Project: non-funded
Collaborators: Dr Han Baltussen, University of Adelaide
Brief Description: This project is my contribution to an international collaboration, Acts of Consolation: Approaches to Loss and Sorrow from Sophocles to Shakespeare, which will be published as a book in 2010. My chapter examines how Greek tragedy, originally from 5th century BCE Athens, explores the dilemmas of grief by acting out consolation and its rejection on stage. Dr Baltussen has organized a group of nearly a dozen international scholars from Australia, USA, Canada, U.K., France and Ireland to collaborate on a history the genre of 'consolation,' from Greek and Roman times through to mediaeval and Renaissance literature. The response to grief (often the death of a loved one) might seem to be a universal experience, but every culture has distinct conventions of grief therapy and "dealing" with loss. This project examines the literary consolation from ancient, mediaeval, and renaissance times, not only to pinpoint gradual changes in philosophies about grief, but also to see how modern grief therapy might benefit from ancient models.

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Publications

Books

Book Chapters

Journal Articles

Recent conference papers

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