THE PRINCETON CLASSICS DEPARTMENT investigates the history, language, literature, and thought of ancient Greece and Rome. We use the perspectives of multiple disciplines to understand and imagine the diversity of these civilizations over almost two thousand years and to reflect on what the classical past has meant to later ages, and to our own.
Statement from the Chair
Over the past weekend at the national meeting of our major scholarly society, a member of this department was subjected to a racist verbal attack in a public forum. I write as chair to deplore and refute the sentiments directed against him and to commit our department to working to eliminate the conditions that make such incidents possible in the professional lives of colleagues in our, or any other, academic discipline.
—Andrew Feldherr
At the Jan. 19 meeting of the board of trustees of Princeton University, President Eisgruber presented each attendee with a copy of Professor Barbara Graziosi’s Homer (OUP 2016), signed by the author. The president has made a tradition of presenting the trustees with recent book by a faulty member at each board meeting and selected Professor Graziosi’s concise introduction to Homeric poetry for this meeting.
"Translating the Odyssey Again: How and Why, With Emily Wilson"
Emily Wilson, professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, brings new life, and a radically contemporary voice to a well-known and familiar story. Wilson will share her reasons…
Sara Magrin, associate professor of Classics at UC Berkeley, spoke on Princeton’s campus on Tuesday, December 4th, delivering a lecture entitled “Being of Two Minds: Plotinus’ Account of Psychological Conflict in Ennead 4.3.31.”
“Nicolette is able to combine a commitment to understanding the ancient world on its own terms with making it speak to contemporary concerns,” said Yelena Baraz, associate professor of classics. “All the work Nicolette does, academic and creative, is personally meaningful. From her first day in the Humanities Sequence she has intensely engaged with the tradition we were teaching and, in her engagement, she was both transforming it and preparing to add to it.”
Update: the recording is now available.
On the evening of Thursday, November 15th, Christopher B. Krebs, associate professor of Classics at Stanford, spoke on Princeton’s campus, delivering an engaging and energizing Prentice Lecture entitled “Classics As Crime Fiction: A Conversation with Caesar, Labienus, and Polybius.” Despite mother nature’s best efforts, the event was well-attended, and the Q&A period produced an…
