Department of Classical Studies
402 Cohen Hall
This talk examines two episodes of human-animal communication in the Odyssey and Valmiki’s Ramayana. How does reading these texts together reveal their poetic strategies and perspectives on human cognition and perspective-taking? These readings emerge from Literature and Humanities, a foundational Common Curriculum course at Yale-NUS in Singapore; Mira Seo is currently engaged in a co-authored book project on comparative readings in ancient literatures.
A classics major at Swarthmore, Mira Seo graduated from the Honors program with High Honors in 1995. From 1995-1998 she studied at Christ Church College, Oxford, earning her second BA in Greats. In 2004 she received her Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University. After teaching at Swarthmore as a visitor in 2004-5, Mira joined the departments of Classical Studies and Comparative Literature at University of Michigan in 2005. Upon earning tenure at University of Michigan in 2012, she was recruited to join the founding faculty of Yale-NUS College, a new liberal arts college in Singapore, where she helped to develop the global Common Curriculum. Mira is a co-founder of the Global Antiquity Minor at Yale-NUS College. In Spring 2019, she and Peter Struck are co-teaching a joint UPenn, Yale-NUS course on ancient epics.
She specializes in Roman literature of the imperial period, especially Flavian poetry. Her book, Exemplary Traits: Reading Characterization in Roman Poetry (OUP) was published in 2013. She has also published on Juan Latino, an African Latinist in 16th century Granada, and is currently engaged in a co-authored book project on comparative readings in ancient literatures.
Email: (mira.seo@yale-nus.edu.sg)
Yale-NUS. https://www.yale-nus.edu.sg/about/faculty/mira-seo/