Position/Status
Associate Teaching Professor
By-Fellow and Director of Studies in Education (Hughes Hall)
E-mail Address
fjf20 @ cam.ac.uk
Qualifications
- PhD King's College London
- MA University of East Anglia
- PGCE University of Cambridge
- BA (Hons) Universities of Warwick and Cologne
Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations
- The Past for the Present (Cluster Board member)
- Classical Association
- Grammaticalia (European researchers working on Latin grammarians and language teaching in antiquity)
- Digital Classicist
- Examiner for Latin for a Public Awarding Body
Profile
Frances teaches on the Education Tripos the PGCE Latin with Classics and the CACL Masters programme. She supervises both postgraduate and undergraduate students at all levels.
Frances completed her PhD at King's College London focusing on the late antique teacher and commentator Servius and his reception. She is interested in how people have read and continue to read and respond to the ancient world and its literature especially Virgil whose place on the school curriculum since his own lifetime is almost continuous.
Research Group
Children's Literature Research Centre
Multilingualism and Languages Education (MuLtiE) (secondary affiliation)
Academic Area/Links
- Arts and Cultures
- Classics
Research Topics
- Education in the Ancient World
- Children's Literature and the Ancient World
- Receptions of the Ancient World
- Late Antiquity
- Classics Education
Prospective PhD Applications
If you'd like to work on education in or about the ancient world at PhD level including literary study of the reception of the ancient world in children's literature (or anything else ancient education based that sounds fun) then please send me an email and I'll be happy to discuss your ideas with you.
Current Research Projects
- From Classical Mythology to Contemporary Education in Britain and Germany. Cambridge-LMU Strategic Partnership Award.
- Young people's knowledge of mythology. An investigation of teenagers' familiarity with ancient mythology outside formal education (funded project)
- Reading Servius in Context and Reception. The reception of the late antique teacher and commentator on Virgil: Maurus Servius Honoratus.
Course Involvement
- Taught Postgraduate
- MPhil Children's Literature
- MEd Transforming Practice
- PGCE Latin with Classics
- Undergraduate
- Education Tripos: Education Creativity Culture; Theatre Text and Production; Children's Literature; Performance Education and Society
- Latin and Greek supervisor
- Dissertation supervisor; Drama supervisor
Selected Publications
Journals
Foster F. (2023). Gods and Magic in Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief. thersites Journal For Transcultural Presences & Diachronic Identities From Antiquity To Date: Classics and the Supernatural in Modern Media 17 32–54. Online and open access here.
Foster F. (2022). Time Travel to a Parallel World: John Christopher’s Fireball. Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 51·1 141 5–18.
Foster F. and Wise J. (2022). Social tensions in studying ancient history. Curriculum Journal 33·4 536-552. Online and open access here.
Foster F. (2021). Teaching Early Latin Comedy in Late Antiquity. Eruditio antiqua: Revue électronique de l'érudition gréco-latine 13 145-164. Online and open access here.
Foster F. (2021). Bees And Vultures: Egyptian Hieroglyphs In Ammianus Marcellinus. The Classical Quarterly 70·2 884-890. DOI: 10.1017/S0009838820000865. Online and open access here.
Foster F. (2019). Teaching 'correct' Latin in late antique Rome. Language & History (Special Issue: Bi/Multilingualism and the History of Language Learning and Teaching) 62·2 57-73. DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2019.1641936. Online here.
Foster F. (2017). Teaching Language through Virgil in Late Antiquity. The Classical Quarterly 67·1 270-283. DOI: 10.1017/S0009838817000295. Online here.
Foster F. (2016). Teaching Virgil's Greek in Late Antiquity. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 26·1 69-81.
Foster F. (2015). Visiting the Ancient Land of the Dead in Le Guin and Riordan. Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 44·122 33-43. Online open access here.
Foster F. (2018). Attitudes to Ancient Greek in Three Schools: A Case Study. The Language Learning Journal 46·2 159-172. DOI: 10.1080/09571736.2014.1002415. Online here.
Foster F. (2014). Lands of the Dead: Homer's Hades and Le Guin's Dry Land. Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction (Special Issue: Fantastika in the Greek and Roman Worlds) 43·118 32–44. Online open access here.
Foster F. (2014). Reconstructing Virgil in the Classroom in Late Antiquity. History of Education 43·3 285–303. DOI:10.1080/0046760X.2014.887791. Online here.
Foster F. (2013). Virgilising Rome in Late Antiquity: Claudian and Servius. New Voices in Classical Reception Studies 8 65-78. Online open access here.
Chapters in Books
Foster F. (2023). Alii dicunt… Servius and Virgil’s Anonymised Readers. In Ute Tischer Thomas Kuhn-Treichel and Stefano Poletti (eds). sicut commentatores loquuntur. Authorship and Commentaries on Poetry / Autorproblematik und antike Dichterexegese. Brepols 311-338.
Foster F. (2023). Learning the 'Jewelled Style'. In Helen Kaufmann and Joshua Hartman (eds). A Late Antique Poetics? The Jeweled Style Revisited. Bloomsbury 61-74.
Foster F. (2022). ‘Learning Latin Grammar with Servius’. In Alessandro Garcea and Daniel Vallat (eds) Ars et Commentarius. Tournhout: Brepols 41-58.
Foster F. (2022). The Aeneid for the next generation. In J.R. O'Neill and A. Rigoni (eds). The Aeneid and the Modern World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vergil’s Epic in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Routledge 233-246. Online here.
Foster F. (2020). Demigod god or monster? Rick Riordan's Hercules. In A. Blanshard and E. Stafford (eds). The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century. Leiden: Brill 181-198. Online here.
Foster F. (2020). Homer and LeGuin: Ancient and Modern Desires for Heroic Memory. In M. Scherer and R. Falconer (eds). A Quest for Remembrance: The Underworld in Classical and Modern Literature. Routledge 174-195. Online here.
Foster F. (2019). Drinking Blood and Talking Ghosts in Diana Wynne Jones's The Time of the Ghost. In B.M. Rogers and B.E. Stevens (eds) Once and Future Antiquities in Science Fiction and Fantasy. London: Bloomsbury 123-134.
Foster F. (2019). Servius on Virgil’s underworld in Late Antiquity. In J. Harrisson (ed) Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World. Routledge 173-189. Online here.
Da Vela B. and Foster F. (2016). Servius Donatus and Language Teaching. In A. Garcea M.-K. Lhommé and D. Vallat (eds) Fragments d'Érudition: Servius et le Savoir Antique. Hildesheim: Olms 143-153.
Selected Recent and Forthcoming Conferences
October 2024. Teaching Classical Vocabulary in Late Antique Rome. Teaching and Learning Latin in Byzantium II: Learning and Using Vocabulary in Byzantium and Beyond Gent.
June 2024. The Paratextual Positioning of Servius's Commentary. Paratexts in Premodern Writing Cultures Gent.
April 2024. Verbal-visual display in Ausonius’s Poetry. Overwhelmed. Spectacles & Visuality in Early and Late Imperial Poetry Edinburgh.
August 2023. New Heroes for Old: Rick Riordan’s Demigods. Disruptive Imaginations: SFRA|GFF Dresden.
July 2023. The Horned God Pan for Children. Pan and the Anthropocene Bristol.
July 2023. Virgil’s Bees in the Late Antique Classroom. Insects in the Premodern World LMU Munich.
September 2022. Two Types of Heroism? Watership Down at Fifty Glasgow.
July 2022. Gods and Magic in Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief. Classics and the Supernatural in Contemporary Media Brading Roman Villa.
July 2022. Floods and Fires: A treacherous journey to Gaul. Meteorology beyond Borders: Ancient and Modern Reflections Utrecht.
July 2022. Cosmic Junctures and Other Winds: constructing the spaces beyond. Constructing Fantastical Worlds: from Antiquity to the Present Amsterdam.
July 2021. Shabti Robots and Hieroglyph Spells: Rick Riordanʼs Egyptians. Do ancient Egyptians dream of electric sheep? The reception of ancient Egypt in science fiction Birmingham.
March 2020. Virgil in the Late Antique Classroom. The Virgil Society ICS London.
August 2014. Lands of the Dead in Speculative Fiction. Diversity in Speculative Fiction in Loncon3: The 72nd World Science Fiction Convention London.
June 2013. Lands of the Dead: Hades and the Dry Land in Earthsea. Swords Sorcery Sandals and Space: The Fantastika and the Classical World Liverpool.
October 2011. Reading Servius in Context. Poster: Arts and Humanities Festival King's College London. (Prize awarded).
March 2008. Performed the part of Lucres in a Thynke Byggly production of Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres. Mediaeval English Theatre Bristol.