Sheila Murnaghan

Professor of Classical Studies
Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek
Faculty Director, Post-baccalaureate Program in Classical Studies
Contact Information
Office Address: 
Cohen 261
Phone: 
(215) 898-7425
Email Address: 
Education: 

Ph.D. (Classics) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1980
B.A. (Classics) University of Cambridge, 1975
A.B. (Classics) Harvard University, 1973

Research and Teaching Interests: 

Greek Literature, especially epic, tragedy, and historiography
Gender in classical culture
Classical reception

Selected Publications: 

Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations (2000), co-editor with Sandra Joshel.

Introductions to new translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey by Stanley Lombardo (1997, 2000).

Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (1987).

"Tragic Bystanders: Choruses and Other Survivors in the Plays of Sophocles," in J. R. C. Cousland and James R. Hume, edd. The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp, (Leiden: Brill, 2009): 321–333.

"The Memorable Past: Antiquity and Girlhood in the Works of Mary Butts and Naomi Mitchison," Remaking the Classics: Literature, Genre and Media in Britain, 1800-2000, ed. Christopher Stray (London 2007) 125-139.

"Farming, Authority, and Truth-Telling in the Greek Tradition," in City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Antiquity, ed. Ineke Sluiter and Ralph Rosen (2006) 93-118.

"The Daughters of Cadmus: Chorus and Characters in Euripides' Bacchae and Ion," in Greek Drama III: Essays in Honour of Kevin Lee, ed. John Davidson, Frances Muecke, and Peter Wilson (London 2006) 99-112.

"Women in Groups: Aeschylus' Suppliants and the Female Choruses of Greek Tragedy," in The Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian Drama, ed. Victoria Pedrick and Steven M. Oberhelman (Chicago 2005) 183-198.

"Penelope's Song: The Lyric Odysseys of Linda Pastan and Louise Glück," Classical and Modern Literature 22 (2002) 1-33 (with Deborah H. Roberts)

Work in Progress: 

a book on Sophocles for the Duckworth "Classical Literature & Society" series

a study of twentieth-century receptions of classics in relation to childhood (with Deborah H. Roberts)

Recent Courses: 

(undergraduate) Sex and Gender in Ancient Greek Society, The Odyssey and its Afterlife, Sophocles
(graduate) Herodotus, Dionysus and Greek Drama, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, Choral Lyric, Homer