BACKGROUND

I'm originally from Indianapolis, Indiana and grew up there and abroad. I did my undergraduate work at Yale before moving on to Cornell for my PhD (with visiting semesters at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and the University of Konstanz). I then spent a happy year in Munich at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, where I wrote dictionary entries for a number of Latin words beginning with the letter P. After that I taught for a couple of years at the University of Illinois, and since 1999 have been in the Department of Classics at the University of Virginia.

TEACHING

At the undergraduate level I regularly teach an introductory lecture course on Roman Civilization. Lately I have also been teaching Medieval Latin and the Latin Bible in alternate years. Other recent upper- level and graduate courses include the Greek Novel, Petronius, Lucan, Statius, Apuleius, St. Augustine's Confessions, Latin declamation, Latin epigraphic poetry, and Latin palaeography. In recent fall semesters I have taught one-credit first-year seminars on Edgar Allan Poe and on Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

RESEARCH

My research centers on late and medieval Latin, especially the North African allegorist Fulgentius, whose works I'm editing and translating. I'm also working on a book-length project on the survival and reception of medieval manuscripts from the fifteenth century to the present. I have a continuing interest in Greek epic and lyric poetry and its reception in later writers, especially the American and European modernist movements. I translated Marcus Aurelius's Meditations for the Modern Library back in 2002. [I don't do interviews, podcasts, etc. relating to Marcus Aurelius, nor do I control the rights to the translation, for which you'll need to contact Penguin Random House.] I sometimes write for the New York Review of Books. I'm on the editorial boards of the Toronto Medieval Latin Texts series and the Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin.

You can follow me online @aristofontes@mastodon.social.