{"id":3664,"date":"2015-09-02T16:16:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T21:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/?post_type=profile&p=3664"},"modified":"2026-01-22T13:10:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:10:01","slug":"stephanie-nelson","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/faculty-profiles\/stephanie-nelson\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephanie Nelson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Curriculum Vitae<\/a><\/h3>\n

Biography<\/h4>\n

I received my BA from St. John\u2019s College in Annapolis, the only school in the country, I tell my students, where Ancient Greek is required. That may not be strictly accurate, but I\u2019m sure it\u2019s the only school where Ptolemy\u2019s Almagest<\/em> is required reading. I then received my MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, branding me forever as a \u201cGreat Books\u201d sort of person and destining me for the Core. My first book, God and the Land: the Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod and Vergil<\/em> was published by Oxford University Press and my various articles range from a study of Hesiod\u2019s treatment of farming, to an interest in the relation of poetry and philosophy in Plato, to studies of narrative time, to a look at T. E. Lawrence\u2019s translation of the Odyssey<\/em>, Shelley\u2019s translation of the Symposium,<\/em> and translation generally, considering the role of translation in the 20th c. in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature<\/em>, vol. 5. In Aristophanes\u2019 Tragic Muse<\/em>: tragedy, comedy, and the polis in Classical Athens<\/em> I looked at the relation of comedy and tragedy in Athens and my most recent work, \u201cOr am I now I?\u201d:<\/em> Time and Identity in Ulysses and the Odyssey<\/em> is on the relation of Joyce and Homer, which is, surprisingly, very little studied, beginning with an unfortunate comment of Ezra Pound\u2019s that the Odyssey<\/em> is merely \u201cscaffolding\u201d for Ulysses<\/em>. Pound was a great poet, but he could be wrong about things.<\/p>\n

What draws all these together, I suppose, is my interest in the way one author, culture, genre \u2013 or translator \u2013 appropriates another, transforming, distorting, and in a way repudiating the original, but also acknowledging a deep and even formative debt. So, I think, Virgil to Hesiod, Greek comedy to tragedy, and James Joyce to Homer. I have also become very interested in time and change generally and am now working on the relation of sight and sound, eye and ear, the simultaneous and that which exists only over time as we see the two in oral literature, in print and in the open and fluid new media developing around us constantly. I guess my belief is that having been forced to master Zoom, I can now master anything.<\/p>\n

Research Interests<\/h4>\n

Greek and Roman epic, Hesiod, Greek comedy and tragedy, intertextuality, translation, and Classical reception, particularly Joyce<\/p>\n

Academic Positions<\/h4>\n

Affiliated Faculty, MFA in Literary Translation, Boston University, 2019-present
\nAssistant Dean and Director, Core Curriculum, Boston University, 2012-2019
\nAssociate Professor, Boston University, 2008-present
\nAssistant Professor, Boston University, 1999-2008
\nInstructor, Core Curriculum, Boston University, 1995 – 1999
\nlnstructor, Department of Philosophy, Saint Xavier University (Chicago) 1991 – 1995
\nAdjunct Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Valparaiso University, 1992 – 1994<\/p>\n

Publications<\/h4>\n

Books<\/u><\/p>\n

\u201cOr am I now I?\u201d:<\/em> Time and Identity in Ulysses and the Odyssey <\/em>(under consideration by University of Florida)<\/p>\n

Aristophanes’ Tragic Muse: Tragedy, Comedy, and the Polis in Classical Athens<\/em> (Brill, 2016)<\/p>\n

Hesiod’s Works and Days<\/em>, translation with commentary (Focus Press, 2008)<\/p>\n

God and the Land: The Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod and Vergil <\/em>(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)<\/p>\n

Book Chapters and Articles<\/u><\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0Voice of the Shuttle: the\u00a0Tereus\u00a0Myth in Aristophanes\u2019\u00a0Birds<\/em>\u201d in Tereus through the Ages. Reassembling the Myth of Tereus from Archaic Epic to Ovid<\/em>, eds. Giacomo Savani, Alessandra Abbattista, Chiara Blanco and Maria Haley (De Gruyter, in progress)<\/p>\n

\u201cPursuing the Forms in Plato\u2019s Symposium <\/em>and Republic<\/em>\u201d in Equality and Excellence in Ancient and Modern Political Philosophy, <\/em>eds. Steven Frankel and John Ray (Penn State University Press, in progress)<\/p>\n

\u201cAcharnians<\/em>: Tragedy and Other Literary Genres\u201d in Blackwell Companion to Aristophanes<\/em>, eds. Matthew Farmer and Jeremy Lefkowitz (Wiley-Blackwell, in progress)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Essay Topics of\u00a0FW\u00a0<\/em>2.2\u201d in Finnegans Wake II.II: Nightlessons<\/em>, eds. Vicki Mahaffey, Yaeli Greenblatt, and Shinjini Chattopadhyay (Brill, in progress)<\/p>\n

\u201cBullockbefriending Bards: the ambivalent role of cattle in the Odyssey<\/em> and Ulysses<\/em>\u201d in Joyce and the Non-Human<\/em>, eds. Michelle Witen and Katherine Ebury (James Joyce Quarterly <\/em>special edition, forthcoming Fall\/Winter\u00a02020-21)<\/p>\n

\u201cNarrative Time\u201d with Barry Spence in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literary Theory<\/em>, ed. Ian<\/span> Richards-Karamarkovich (Oxford University Press, online, 2020 https:\/\/oxfordre.com\/literature\/view\/10.1093\/acrefore\/9780190201098.001.0001\/acrefore-9780190201098-e-1076<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201cClassics in Translation\u201d in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature,<\/em> Vol. 5: 1880\u20132000, ed. Kenneth Haynes (Oxford University Press, 2019)<\/p>\n

\u201cBetween Being and Becoming: Comedy, Tragedy and the Symposium<\/em>,\u201d in Thinking the Greeks: A Volume in Honor of James M. Redfield, <\/em>eds. Lillian Doherty and Bruce M. King (Routledge, 2018)<\/p>\n

\u201cHesiod and the Georgic Tradition,\u201d in The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod<\/em>, eds. Alexander Loney and Stephen Scully (Oxford University Press, 2018)<\/p>\n

\u201cTelling Time: Techniques of Narrative Time in Ulysses<\/em> and the Odyssey<\/em>,\u201d in Reading Joycean Temporalities<\/em>, ed. Jolanta Wawrzycka, (Brill, 2018)<\/p>\n

\u201cTime and Memory in the Odyssey <\/em>and Ulysses<\/em>,\u201d in Time and Trace<\/em>, eds. Steven Ostovich and Sabine Gross (Brill, 2016)<\/p>\n

\u201cAristophanes and the Polis,\u201d in The Political Theory of Aristophanes: Rethinking the Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy<\/em>, eds. Jeremy Mhire and Brian-Paul Frost (SUNY, 2014)<\/p>\n

Various Entries: The Virgil Encyclopedia<\/em>, eds. Richard Thomas, Jan Ziolkowski (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)<\/p>\n

“Shelley and Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em>: the poet’s revenge,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition<\/em> 14 (2007) 100-29<\/p>\n

“Cinematographic Joyce:” Joyce Workshop, 2006,” James Joyce Literary Supplement<\/em>, 21.1, May 2007<\/p>\n

“Hesiod” in A Companion to Ancient Epic<\/em>, ed. John Miles Foley (Blackwell, 2005)<\/p>\n

“Lawrence’s Odyssey<\/em>: A “Prosaic” Approach to Greatness” with Maren Cohn, in The Waking Dream of T. E. Lawrence: Essays on His Life, Literature, and Legacy <\/em>ed. Charles Stang (New York: Palgrave, 2002)<\/p>\n

\u201cFull Circle: The Inherent Tension in Ethics from Plato to Plato\u201d in Instilling Ethics<\/em>, ed. Norma Thompson (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000)<\/p>\n

\u201cCalypso’s Choice: Immortality and Heroic Striving in the Odyssey <\/em>and Ulysses<\/em>\u201d in Literary Imagination, Ancient and Modern<\/em>, ed. Todd Breyfogle (University of Chicago Press, 1999)<\/p>\n

\u201cJustice and Farming in the Works and Days<\/em>\u201d in The Greeks and Us: Essays in Honor of Arthur Adkins<\/em>, eds. Robert B. Louden and Paul Schollmeier (University of Chicago Press, 1996)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Justice of Zeus in Hesiod’s Fable of the Hawk and the Nightingale.\u201d The Classical Journal <\/em>92 (1997) 235-247<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Drama of Hesiod’s Farm\u201d Classical Philology<\/em> 91 (1996) 45-53<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7388,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/3664"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7388"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/3664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10637,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/3664\/revisions\/10637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}