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Episode 8: Trojan Women
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Long considered the oldest anti-war play, Euripides’ Trojan Women is a devastating portrayal of the suffering of war’s female victims. It is also about female relationships and forms of agency, as well as the power of artistic innovation in the face of brutality and loss. Naomi discusses this strange and beautiful play with Professor Ella Haselswerdt (University of California, Los Angeles) and Rosanna Bruno (artist and illustrator of Euripides’ Trojan Women: A Comic).
Note: most of this episode is a recording of a live panel discussion held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in April 2026.
Guests:
Rosanna Bruno is a New York-based artist who works across different media—paintings, ceramics, and comics. She is the recipient of multiple fellowships, including a New York Foundation Artist Fellowship, two Yaddo residencies, and a LMCC residency. Her first book, The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson, was published in 2017. Her second, a collaboration with Anne Carson called Euripides’ Trojan Women: A Comic, was deemed the New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021. Rosanna’s work has been published and reviewed in many prestigious venues, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and the Times Literary Supplement.
Ella Haselswerdt is an assistant professor in the Department of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her many publications on Greek tragedy include an article on Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, which won the American Journal of Philology Best Article Prize for 2019. She has also published on dreams and the body in ancient Greek and Roman medical texts and on Sappho—both queer engagements with Sappho and Sappho in relation to materials and the practice of philology. Her book, Epistemologies of Suffering: Tragedy, Trauma, and the Choral Subject, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
***VIDEO OF THIS EPISODE COMING SOON!***
Recommended Translations:
Bruno, R. and A. Carson. 2021. Euripides’ Trojan Women: A Comic. New York: New Directions.
Grene, D. and R. Lattimore. 2013. Euripides III: Hecuba, Andromache, The Trojan Women, Ion. 3rd edition, ed. M. Griffith and G. W. Most. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lefkowitz, M. and J. Romm, ed. 2016. The Greek Plays. New York: Penguin Random House. (Trojan Women translation by E. Wilson.)
Shapiro, A. 2009. Euripides: Trojan Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Useful introduction and notes by P. Burian.)
Svarlien, D. A. 2012. Euripides: Andromache, Hecuba, Trojan Women. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett. (Useful introduction and notes by R. Scodel.)
Some Further Reading:
Croally, N. T. 1994. Euripidean Polemic: The Trojan Women and the Function of Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eberwine, P. 2019. “‘Music for the Wretched’: Euripides’ Trojan Women as Refugee Theatre.” Classical Receptions Journal 11: 194–210.
Goff, B. 2009. Euripides: Trojan Women. London: Duckworth.
Loraux, N. 2002. The Mourning Voice: An Essay on Greek Tragedy. Trans. E. Trapnell Rawlings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Poole, A. 1976. “Total disaster: Euripides’ The Trojan Women.” Arion 3:257–287.
Suter, A. 2003. “Lament in Euripides’ Trojan Women.” Mnemosyne 56: 1–28.
Weiss, N. 2018. The Music of Tragedy: Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater. Oakland: University of California Press. Chapter 2: “Musical Absence in Trojan Women.”
Wohl, V. 2015. Euripides and the Politics of Form. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapter 2: “Beautiful Tears.”