Within the past 15 months, five out of the 13 faculty members from the Department of Classical Studies have produced books that have been published by major presses. Stephen Scully, one of the five faculty members, commented that this feat is truly a “striking” statistic, and that “on a departmental percentage basis, this may well be a BU record for a humanities department.”
Below are short summaries of each book.
Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse: Comedy, Tragedy and the Polis in 5th Century Athens, Stephanie Nelson (Brill Publishers, 2016)
Despite the many studies of Greek comedy and tragedy separately, scholarship has generally neglected the relation of the two. And yet the genres developed together, were performed together, and influenced each other to the extent of becoming polar opposites. In Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse, Stephanie Nelson considers this opposition through an analysis of how the genres developed, by looking at the tragic and comic elements in satyr drama, and by contrasting specific Aristophanes plays with tragedies on similar themes, such as the individual, the polis, and the gods.
Stephanie Nelson an assistant dean of CAS, director of the Core Curriculum, and an associate professor of classical studies. Her research interests include Greek and Roman epic, Hesiod, Greek comedy and tragedy, intertextuality, translation, and Classical reception, particularly Joyce.
Pericles and the Conquest of History: A Political Biography, Loren J. Samons II (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
“As the most famous and important political leader in Athenian history, Pericles has featured prominently in descriptions and analysis of Athenian democracy from antiquity to the present day. Although contemporary historians have tended to treat him as representative of values like liberty and equality, Loren J. Samons, II demonstrates that the quest to make Athens the preeminent power in Greece served as the central theme of Pericles’ career.”
Loren J. Samons, II, is a professor and the director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Classical Studies. His research interests include Greek history in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., Athenian democracy and imperialism, Greek and Roman historiography, warfare in antiquity, and the later Roman empire.
Hesiod’s Theogony, from Babylonian Creation Myths to Paradise Lost, Stephen Scully (Oxford University Press, 2015)
In his book, Scully both offers a reading of Hesiod’s Theogony and traces the reception and shadows of this authoritative Greek creation story in Greek and Roman texts up to Milton’s own creation myth, which sought to “’soar above the’ Aonian Mount [i.e., the Theogony]…and justify the ways of God to men.” Scully also considers the poem in light of Near Eastern creation stories, including the Enûma elish and Genesis, as well as the most striking of modern scientific myths, Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. Scully reads Hesiod’s poem as a hymn to Zeus and a city-state creation myth, arguing that Olympus is portrayed as an idealized polity and – with but one exception – a place of communal harmony.
Stephen Scully is the chair of the Department of Classical Studies, as well as associate professor. His research interests include Greek epic, comparative mythology, Greek tragedy, Plato, Lucretius and Vergil, Renaissance Italy, and translation.
The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome, James Uden (Oxford University Press, 2015)
The Invisible Satirist offers a fresh new reading of the Satires of Juvenal, rediscovering the poet as a smart and scathing commentator on the cultural and political world of second-century Rome. Breaking away from the focus in recent scholarship on issues of genre, this study situates Juvenal’s Satires within the context of the politics, oratory, and philosophy of Rome under Trajan and Hadrian. In particular, the book shows how Juvenal offers a distinctively Roman response to the Greek sophists and philosophers of the so-called “Second Sophistic.”
James Uden is the GRS director of graduate admissions, as well as an assistant professor of classical studies. His research interests include Latin poetry (especially satire, epigram, and fable), the literary culture of Roman Greece, Late Antiquity, and the transformation of eighteenth century classics in English Literature.
Livy’s Political Philosophy: Power and Personality in the First Pentad, Ann Vasaly (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
This volume explores the political implications of the first five books of Livy’s celebrated history of Rome, challenging the common perception of the author as an apolitical moralist. Ann Vasaly argues that Livy intended to convey through the narration of particular events crucial lessons about the interaction of power and personality, including the personality of the Roman people as a whole.
Ann Vasaly is an associate professor in the Department of Classical Studies, and her research interests include Latin prose, Cicero, Roman rhetoric, Latin historiography, especially Caesar, Sallust, and Livy.