Faculty

Carol Dougherty
Professor and Chair

I took a fairly unconventional path to a career in classics. Having taken neither Greek nor Latin in high school (in fact knowing nothing really about the ancient world) I started off my college career as a French major. I then explored linguistics and anthropology before finally realizing that I could pursue my interests in language and culture most successfully and happily within the field of classics. I then worked like mad on my Greek and Latin!!

My research and teaching interests focus on the intersection of literature, history, politics and culture of the archaic and classical Greek world. I teach classes on classical mythology and the theme of travel in literature as well as in Greek language and literature. I am the author of The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece and The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic World of Homer's Odyssey. I have also co-edited, together with Leslie Kurke of UC Berkeley, two volumes of essays on culture in the ancient world. I am currently working on the themes of travel and culture in classical Athens.

Ray Starr
Theodora Stone Sutton Professor of Classics

I came to Wellesley in 1979, after receiving my BA from the University of Michigan in 1974 and my PhD from Princeton four years later. I teach a wide variety of courses throughout the Latin curriculum and in Classical Civilization (courses in translation). I'd highlight ClCv 102: Uncovering the Ancient World, an introduction to ancient Greece and Rome; ClCv 243: Roman Law, where I get to spend three months every other year arguing with 25 very smart people about What would happen if ...; Latin 200 (on the emperor Augustus, the saint Perpetua, and the poet Catullus); Latin 311: Roman Satire; and Latin 310: Roman Historical Mythology. I've published a variety of articles on various subjects, especially Vergil and the commentaries written in antiquity about his poems and the sociology of Roman literature, especially the circulation, reading, and teaching of literary texts in antiquity. My current research explores literature, communication, and media studies as applied to Latin literature, especially political communication. I've received two fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies to support my research, Wellesley's Pinanski Prize and Apgar Award, and the Classical Association of New England's Barlow-Beach Award for Distinguished Service.

Kate Gilhuly
Assistant Professor

I started College as an English major, but at the end of my first year, when I was working on a fishing boat in Alaska, I started to worry that I might graduate college without acquiring any new skills. A friend of mine told me to try the Classics Department, where I could still study literature while learning Greek and Latin. When I realized all the amazing and weird and downright subversive stories that make up the classical canon, and experienced the allusion of mastery that learning the grammar of dead languages could provide, I knew I had found a place for myself. I loved the combination of the linguistic minutia with the big ideas.

In my research and teaching, I have focused on Gender and the history of sexuality in ancient Greece. At Wellesley, I have taught classes on Greek drama, gender in antiquity as well as Greek and Latin language classes. I have published two articles on Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, I am completing a manuscript on the typologies of women in the Athenian social imaginary. During the Academic Year 2007-2008 I will be on leave, at the Radcliffe Institute for the Advancement of the Humanities, where I will be working on a manuscript project entitled “Landscapes of Desire: The Erotics of Place in Classical Athens.”

Owen Goslin
Visiting Assistant Professor

I entered college at the University of Chicago with the vague notion of studying ancient social history, but without any background in the ancient languages. I had heard how difficult Greek could be, so I decided to take that first to see if I was cut out for a major in classical studies. It was tough – but I found that I loved the challenge of the language, its literature, and the window it opened onto the social life of ancient Greece. Ultimately as a result of my fascination with Greek and Latin poetry I decided to pursue graduate studies at UCLA.   
 
My principal research is now on Greek tragedy, in particular the genre’s engagement with the larger social and political life of fifth-century Athens. I recently completed my dissertation on the treatment of pity in Euripidean theater, which derived from my broader interest in the role of the emotions in ancient political rhetoric (“Enacting pity: a study of rhetoric, supplication and decision-making in Euripides”, 2006). Aside from tragedy I continue to work on Hesiod, Hellenistic poetry (especially Callimachus), Ovid and Latin elegy.      

Sarah Blake
Visiting Instructor

Sarah Blake graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honors B.A. in Latin and English. She will shortly obtain her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California with a dissertation entitled, "Writing Materials: Things in Flavian Rome," an analysis of the representations of inanimate objects in the imperial period, with emphasis on Martial's Xenia and Apophoreta. Her areas of interest include Hellenistic and Latin literature, particularly elegy and epigram, as well as Roman social and cultural studies, feminist and critical race theory, and the history of Classical scholarship.

David Teegarden
Visiting Instructor

I started college as a classical guitar performance major.  I thus lived in the practice room.  An excellent course in Greek history, however, changed everything.  It was – if I remember correctly – a course covering the years 700 – 500 BCE.  Regardless, I was intrigued by both the linguistic and conceptual challenge involved in “doing” ancient Greek history: reading ancient Greek to investigate, for example, the origin and development of democratic governance.  I soon decided to change my academic path and study classical antiquity.  I thus lived in the library. 

My current work investigates the political culture of Greek poleis (city-states) of the Classical and early Hellenistic periods (roughly 450- 250 BCE).  In particular, I am interested in practices, institutions, and ideologies involved in maintaining – and contesting – control of the state (i.e. the polis).  In order to investigate that “object of inquiry,” I conjoin epigraphic and social scientific methodologies.  I read, that is, texts inscribed on stone (by those who control the polis) through the lens of theories that seek to elucidate basic, social dynamics.  My dissertation, entitled “Defending Democracy: A Study of Ancient Greek Anti-Tyranny Legislation,” was an attempt to employ that methodology on a large scale.

• Contact: Pat Bois, pbois@wellesley.edu
• Created By: Rebecca Kayes '07
• Created: June, 2007
• Last Modified: August 17, 2007
• Expires: September 1, 2008