Diana Spencer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3829424 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Diana Spencer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Diana |
| FAMILY NAME | Spencer |
| SIGNATURE | SPENCER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4076-6874 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
An Ideal Life
This chapter examines how ancient Romans conceptualized the countryside through fragmentary or emblematic representations across various media, arguing that seemingly insignificant elements like painted birds, plants, and farm animals functioned as powerful symbols connecting urban Roman identity to agricultural roots. These “countryside” motifs appear in villa decoration and literature not merely as decorative elements but as complex topological…
The Grey Areas
This article reflects on 11 years leading the University of Birmingham's Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences unit, examining how we might continue to educate undergraduates in genuine interdisciplinarity when the very concept remains contested and unstable. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's understanding of historical consciousness and the ‘weak messianic power’ of the past, I argue that interdisciplinary education succeeds not through mastery but throu…
Language and Authority in De Lingua Latina
Language and Authority in De Lingua Latina
Varro’s Roman Ways
During a tumultuous phase in Roman Republican politics M. Terentius Varro’s De Lingua Latina developed a complex and nuanced hermeneutic toolkit for citizen self-fashioning. Cicero once complimented Varro as the man whose work had led Romans home to a knowledge of themselves as agents within a specific and acculturated space. This chapter explores how De Lingua Latina works to deliver to successful readers a particular form of self-knowledge as L…
Possibly Solving Post-Reformation Disunity
Possibly Solving Post-Reformation Disunity Diana Spencer Reformation, Christian unity, post-Reformation disunity, misunderstanding the Bible, conflicting Christian traditions On this 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation, a possible solution to the subsequent disunity recently lamented by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York might be for the main Christian denominations to agree to set up jointly small committees of scholars, each o…
Movement and the Linguistic Turn
The late Republican polymath Varro's second triad of ‘books’ on the Latin language (De Lingua Latina) were aimed at exploring the semiotic relationship between time, space, and movement in the development of Latin. These books explore how langue (the conventions and rules of language) relates to parole (the speech act) over time. This chapter analyzes passages from this section of Varro's study in order to show how the discourse of movement, and …
The Sites of Rome
Propertius, Hercules, and the Dynamics of Roman Mythic Space in Elegy 4.9
Propertius Elegy 4.9 embodies a paradox. This version of Hercules' adventure on the site of the future Rome emphasises the impossibility of constructing fixed levels of cultural significance within the mythic and historicised Roman past, yet in the rewriting of this myth, poet, reader, and text are implicated in the process of configuring the past that the poem seeks to subvert. 1 Propertius involves his audience in a discourse that uses Augustan…
Propertius, Hercules, and the Dynamics of Roman Mythic Space in Elegy 4.9
Propertius Elegy 4.9 embodies a paradox. This version of Hercules' adventure on the site of the future Rome emphasises the impossibility of constructing fixed levels of cultural significance within the mythic and historicised Roman past, yet in the rewriting of this myth, poet, reader, and text are implicated in the process of configuring the past that the poem seeks to subvert. 1 Propertius involves his audience in a discourse that uses Augustan…
Propertius, Hercules, and the Dynamics of Roman Mythic Space in Elegy 4.9
Propertius Elegy 4.9 embodies a paradox. This version of Hercules' adventure on the site of the future Rome emphasises the impossibility of constructing fixed levels of cultural significance within the mythic and historicised Roman past, yet in the rewriting of this myth, poet, reader, and text are implicated in the process of configuring the past that the poem seeks to subvert. 1 Propertius involves his audience in a discourse that uses Augustan…
The Sites of Rome
Movement and the Linguistic Turn
The late Republican polymath Varro's second triad of ‘books’ on the Latin language (De Lingua Latina) were aimed at exploring the semiotic relationship between time, space, and movement in the development of Latin. These books explore how langue (the conventions and rules of language) relates to parole (the speech act) over time. This chapter analyzes passages from this section of Varro's study in order to show how the discourse of movement, and …
Possibly Solving Post-Reformation Disunity
Possibly Solving Post-Reformation Disunity Diana Spencer Reformation, Christian unity, post-Reformation disunity, misunderstanding the Bible, conflicting Christian traditions On this 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation, a possible solution to the subsequent disunity recently lamented by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York might be for the main Christian denominations to agree to set up jointly small committees of scholars, each o…
Varro’s Roman Ways
During a tumultuous phase in Roman Republican politics M. Terentius Varro’s De Lingua Latina developed a complex and nuanced hermeneutic toolkit for citizen self-fashioning. Cicero once complimented Varro as the man whose work had led Romans home to a knowledge of themselves as agents within a specific and acculturated space. This chapter explores how De Lingua Latina works to deliver to successful readers a particular form of self-knowledge as L…
Language and Authority in De Lingua Latina
Language and Authority in De Lingua Latina
An Ideal Life
This chapter examines how ancient Romans conceptualized the countryside through fragmentary or emblematic representations across various media, arguing that seemingly insignificant elements like painted birds, plants, and farm animals functioned as powerful symbols connecting urban Roman identity to agricultural roots. These “countryside” motifs appear in villa decoration and literature not merely as decorative elements but as complex topological…
The Grey Areas
This article reflects on 11 years leading the University of Birmingham's Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences unit, examining how we might continue to educate undergraduates in genuine interdisciplinarity when the very concept remains contested and unstable. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's understanding of historical consciousness and the ‘weak messianic power’ of the past, I argue that interdisciplinary education succeeds not through mastery but throu…
History (7 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Lingua franca (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (3 works) · Linguistics (3 works)