Field of Classics

Faculty in the Department of Classics

Frederick M. Ahl
Professor, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow (also a member of the Department of Comparative Literature). Greek and Roman Epic and Drama, Intellectual History of Greece and Rome.
Author of Lucan: An Introduction; Seneca: Three Tragedies; Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets; Sophocles' Oedipus: Evidence and Self-Conviction; Statius' Thebaid: A Reconsideration; (with Hanna Roisman) The Odyssey Re-Formed; articles on Greek music, Homeric narrative, ancient rhetoric, and Roman imperial poetry. Editor of the translation series Masters of Latin Literature. Published most recently: Two Faces of Oedipus: Sophocles'Oedipus Tyrannus and Seneca's Oedipus and a new translation of the Aeneid.

Kimberly Bowes
Assistant Professor. Classical Archaeology, Late Antiquity. Archaeology of religion; domestic architecture; landscape archaeology; later Roman economies.
Author of Private Worship and Public Values: Religious Change in Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press, 2008. Co-editor of Between Text and Territory: Survey and Excavation in the terra of San Vincenzo al Volturno, British School Monographs, Rome/London, 2007 with Richard Hodges and Karen Francis; of Hispania in Late Antiquity: Current Approaches, Brill, Leiden, 2005 with Michael Kulikowski. Current projects include a book on later Roman villas, wealth and economics, and two excavation projects: Excavating the Roman Peasant in Tuscany; The Philosophiana project in central Sicily.

Tad Brennan
Professor (also Philosophy). Ancient Philosophy, especially Hellenistic Philosophy and Ancient Ethics.

Charles Brittain
Professor and Chair of Classics (also Philosophy). Ancient Philosophy, especially Hellenistic epistemology and ethics, and Platonist psychology and ethics.
Author of Philo of Larissa, and translator, with Tad Brennan, of Simplicius' Commentary on the Handbook of Epictetus. Currently working on Cicero and Augustine.

Kevin Clinton
Emeritus Professor. Greek Religion, Literature, and Epigraphy.
Author of The Sacred Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries; Myth and Cult: Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries; Eleusis, The Inscriptions on Stone: Documents of the Sanctuary of the Two Goddesses and the Public Documents of the Deme; and articles on Greek literature, religion, and inscriptions. Current work: various studies in Greek literature and religion, including books on the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Mysteries of the Great Gods in Samothrace. Supervisor of the project for the Computerization of Greek Inscriptions.

John E. Coleman
Emeritus Professor. Prehistoric and Classical Archaeology, especially in Greece and Cyprus.
Director of the Cornell Halai and East Lokris Project (Greece). Author of Kephala (Keos I) and Excavations at Pylos in Elis; co-author of Alambra (on the Cornell excavations at Alambra in Cyprus). Co-editor of Greeks and Barbarians.

Gail Fine
Professor (also Philosophy). Ancient Philosophy.
Author of On Ideas: Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and articles on ancient philosophy, especially on various topics in epistemology and metaphysics. Editor of Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology and Plato II: Ethics, Politics, Religion and the Soul.

Michael Fontaine
Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Latin Literature, especially Republican drama, Augustan poetry, textual criticism, and wordplay.
Author of Funny Words in Plautine Comedy (Oxford University Press, 2009) and articles on the Roman comedians and other Latin poets. In progress: co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Ancient Comedy (Oxford University Press, c. 2011) and (in development) a monograph on ambiguity in Latin literature.

David P. Mankin
Associate Professor. Latin Literature.
Author of Horace's Epodes.

Sturt W. Manning
Goldwin Smith Professor of Classical Archaeology, and Director of The Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology. Classical Archaeology, Aegean, Cypriot, and east Mediterranean prehistory, Archaeological science; Dendrochronology, dendroclimatology, dendrochemistry, and climate change science; Radiocarbon dating.
Archaeological interests focus on the Aegean, Cyprus and neighboring regions, especially investigating changing forms of social complexity and social relations, trade, and temporal timescales. Director of fieldwork projects from 1990 to the present in Cyprus spanning from the Late Roman period back to the earliest Neolithic. Archaeological science interests focus around the development and application of tree-ring and radiocarbon analyses to archaeology and environmental science especially as relevant to the Mediterranean and Near East.

Alan J. Nussbaum
Professor (also Linguistics). Indo-European Linguistics, Greek and Latin Language and Linguistics, Homer, Old Latin.
Author of Head and Horn in Indo-European; Two Studies in Greek and Homeric Linguistics; and articles on Greek, Latin, and Italic.

Hayden Pelliccia
Associate Professor. Greek Literature.
Author of Mind, Body, and Speech in Homer and Pindar and articles and reviews on Greek literature. Editor of Selected Dialogues of Plato.

Pietro Pucci
Goldwin Smith Professor of Classics. Greek Epic, Drama, Mythology, and Textual Criticism.
Author of Hesiod and the Language of Poetry; The Violence of Pity in Euripides' Medea; Odysseus Polutropos; Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father; Enigma, Segreto, Oracolo; The Song of the Sirens: Essays on Homer, Xenophon; Apology of Socrates; Sofocle, Filottete, Introduzione e commento. Full bibliography.

Hunter R. Rawlings III
Professor (also History), and University President Emeritus. Greek History and Historiography.
Author of A Semantic Study of prophasis to 400 B.C. and The Structure of Thucydides' History.

Eric Rebillard
Professor (also of History) and Director of Graduate Studies. Roman history, Late Antiquity. Early Christianity, Augustine, Roman Funerary Practices.
Currently writing Sharing the City: Jews, Pagans and Christians in Late Antique North Africa. Research project on Statistical Patterns of Funerary Behavior in the Roman Empire. Also editor of L'Année philologique on the Internet (www.annee-philologique.com). Author of Musarna. Vol. 3. La nécropole impériale (Ecole française de Rome, 2009); The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (Cornell University Press, 2009: English translation of Religion et sépulture : l’Église, les vivants et les morts dans l’Antiquité tardive, Éd. de l’EHESS, 2003); In hora mortis: évolution de la pastorale chrétienne de la mort aux IVe et Ve siècles dans l’Occident latin (École française de Rome, 1994). Co-editor of Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire = Orthodoxy, Christianity, history (École française de Rome, 2000) with Susanna Elm and Antonella Romano; Hellénisme et christianisme: questions de religion, de philosophie et d'histoire dans l'Antiquité tardive (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2004) with Michel Narcy.

Jeffrey Rusten
Professor. Greek Literature. Classical Athens (5th-4th c. BCE) and its legacy and reception in culture and politics, especially historiography (Thucydides) and theater (comedy).
Author of Dionysius Scytobrachion. Editor of Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War Book II; Sophocles, Oidipous Tyrannos: A Commentary; and Theophrastus, The Characters (Loeb Classical Library). Editor of Thucydides (Oxford, 2009).

Barry S. Strauss
Professor (also History). Ancient Greek History.
Author of Athens After the Peloponnesian War: Class, Faction and Policy 403-386 B.C.; Fathers and Sons in Athens: Ideology and Society in the Era of the Peloponnesian War; The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Ancient Greece and Western Civilization; The Trojan War: A New History; The Spartacus War, and Rowing Against the Current: On Learning to Scull at Forty. Co-author of The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists and Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment. Co-editor of Hegemonic Rivalry from Thucydides to the Nuclear Age and of War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War. Current project is a book on ancient generals and the structure of wars.

Faculty in Other Departments

Annetta Alexandridis
Assistant Professor, Classical Art History and Archaeology. Roman portrait, Greek myth and iconography, Archaeology and photography.
Author of Die Frauen des römischen Kaiserhauses. Eine Untersuchung ihrer bildlichen Darstellung von Livia bis Iulia Domna (Mainz: Zabern 2004) and Archäologie der Photographie. Bilder aus der Photothek der Berliner Antikensammlung (together with Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer; Mainz: Zabern: 2004). Current research project on Shifting Species: The iconography of metamorphosis and zoophilia in Greek myth.

Kathryn L. Gleason
Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture. Classical Archaeology, Landscapes and Gardens of the Ancient Roman World, particularly Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Project Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum Excavations at Caesarea Maritima. Co-Principal Investigator of the American Academy in Rome Excavations at "Horace's Villa", Licenza, Italy. Co-editor with Naomi F. Miller of The Archaeology of Garden and Field.

Kimberly Haines-Eitzen
Associate Professor, Near Eastern Studies. Early Christianity, Late Antiquity.

Scott MacDonald
Professor of Philosophy, and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies. Ancient and Medieval Philosophy.
Editor of Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology. Articles published on Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, and a variety of topics in medieval philosophy.

Andrew Ramage
Emeritus Professor of Art History and Archaeology. Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology, Archaeology of Asia Minor, Ceramics.
Associate Director of Cornell-Harvard Sardis Expedition. Author of Lydian Houses and Architectural Terracottas and co-author of King Croesus' Gold: Excavations at Sardis and the History of Gold Refining and Roman Art: Romulus to Constantine (5th edition).

Carin Ruff
Assistant Professor, English. Medieval Latin Language and Literature, Latin Paleography.

Michael Weiss
Associate Professor, Linguistics. Indo-European Linguistics; Historical Phonology and Morphology of Greek, Latin, and the Sabellic Languages.
Books: Language and Ritual in Sabellic Italy (Leiden: Brill) and Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin (Ann Arbor: Beech Stave) to come out this year (2009).  Editing together with Andrew Garrett a Handbook of Indo-European Studies and writing a new Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics with Jay Jasanoff, both for Oxford University Press.

updated 10/8/2010