2025 Ethel M Wood Lecture & Reception

Professor Judith Buchanan (University of Oxford) will give the 2025 Ethel M Wood Lecture on

‘Courting and thwarting the “ill word”: the figure of Judith in film, art and literature’

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.

The story of the Apocrypha’s Judith involves a daring sexual charade, a brazen act of decapitation and a healthy dose of sang froid. Unsurprisingly, the conspicuous paradoxes inherent in the tale (murderous sexuality mixed with ardent piety), its sensational character (defenceless widow slays drunken general) and symbolic appeal (woman as seductress, warrior, avenger, revolutionary, patriot, politician, priest) have made of it one to which writers and artists of all media have been repeatedly drawn across the centuries. Its visually suggestive elements have provided rich pickings as its central character has been repeatedly reconfigured to provide a means through which successive generations might reflect on female virtue, sexuality, violence, piety and the citizen’s obligations to the state in time of need. Judith Buchanan's title draws on Ch 8, v 8 of the book of Judith: ‘there was none that gave her ill word; for she feared God greatly.’ The talk will look at the book of Judith itself and will explore how artistic engagements with the character of Judith across media and eras have embraced some of the extreme contradictions inherent in the character’s symbolic appeal. The talk will include illustration from, and reference, to paintings, works of literature and silent-era films.

Judith Buchanan is Master of St Peter’s College Oxford, Professor of English and Film in the English Faculty and Pro-Vice-Chancellor without portfolio at the University of Oxford. She is both a Shakespearean and a film scholar, and she has a particular interest in the silent era and film’s engagements with the other arts. She runs ‘Silents Now’, bringing silent cinema to contemporary audiences in fresh and creative ways.