News
On 11 February 2014, Helen gave a paper to the Classics Department at the University of Nottingham, in association with the university's Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies.Read more...
Helen's first monograph, Sparta's German Children: The ideal of ancient Sparta in the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, 1818-1920, and in National Socialist elite schools (the Napolas), 1933-1945, has recently been reviewed in the German journal Archiv für Sozialgeschichte (Vol. 54, 2014).Read more...
On 23 January 2013, Helen gave an invited lecture at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Unversität Münster, under the aegis of the Centre for the History and Culture of the Eastern Mediterranean (Centrum für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Mittelmeerraums).Read more...
New publication: 'Zwischen Freundschaft und Feindschaft'Helen's article, 'Zwischen Freundschaft und Feindschaft: Exploring relationships between pupils at the Napolas and British public schoolboys', has recently been published in the 6th volume of Angermion: Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, Intellectual History and Cultural Transfers / Jahrbuch für britisch-deutsche Kulturbeziehungen.
The article looks at a series of exchanges which took place between the Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten and British public schools, between 1934 and 1939.Read more...
Two new publications: 'Hindsight' and 'Anti-Enlightenment'The last two months have seen the appearance of two articles on very different topics. The first, entitled '"Anti-Enlightenment": National Socialist educators’ troubled relationship with humanism and the philhellenist tradition', was published in the latest issue of Publications of the English Goethe Society, a special issue dedicated to the topic of German philhellenism. The second, entitled ‘Spartan Supremacy: A “Possession for Ever”? Early fourth-century expectations of enduring ascendancy’, appeared earlier this month in an edited volume on Hindsight in Greek and Roman History.Read more...
On 13 December 2013, Helen Roche and Carol Atack hosted the Legacy of Greek Political Thought Network Workshop, a one-day colloquium which took place at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.Read more...
On 11 November 2013, Helen presented a paper entitled 'Narrating the Fall of Empires in Weimar and National Socialist Racial Ideology' to the Fieldnotes Seminar at the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).Read more...
On 24 October 2013, Helen presented a paper entitled 'Herrschaft durch Schulung: The "Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten im Osten" and the Third Reich's Germanising Mission' at an international conference on 'Nationalsozialismus und Regionalbewußtsein im östlichen Europa: Ideologie - Machtausbau - Beharrung'.Read more...
New publication: "Wanderer, kommst du nach Pforta"Helen's article, '"Wanderer, kommst du nach Pforta": The tension between Classical tradition and the demands of a Nazi elite-school education at Schulpforta and Ilfeld, 1934–1945' has just been published in the latest issue of the European Review of History / revue européenne d'histoire. The paper explores the tensions which arose when Schulpforta, Germany’s most renowned humanistic boarding-school, was forcibly turned into a Nazi elite-school (a Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt, or Napola).Read more...
Outreach: Leicester University Distance-Learning CourseHelen has recently contributed to a distance-learning course which is currently offered by the University of Leicester, entitled 'Deconstructing Sparta'. The coursebook contains ten thematic chapters, which aim to synthesise the most up-to-date scholarship on Sparta in an engaging and readable fashion.
Helen's chapter, entitled 'Later Reception and Modern Recreation of Sparta', charts the development of Spartan reception through the ages.Read more...