A Conversation with Laura Slatkin
Gallatin Professor Laura Slatkin has research and teaching interests in ancient Greek and Roman poetry, comparative mythology, ancient and modern drama and lyric, ancient Near Eastern literature, and cultural and gender studies of antiquity. Her recent course offerings include Ancient Reflections in a Time of Modern War, Medea and Beloved, The Ancient Theatre and Its Influences, and The Odyssey: Estrangement and Homecoming.
In an institution that places strong emphasis on significant texts, Slatkin is right at home; her courses focus on some of the most foundational texts of the Western tradition. “I am a longtime student of the classics, and teaching is a way of continuing that immersion in these titanic works,” she states. “Epic, tragedy, lyric, political debate, family trauma—you don’t get any higher stakes than you do in the works left to us by Greek and Roman antiquity. I find it exciting and exhilarating to sit with the specifics of Homer’s language, or Sophocles’—these endlessly rich texts are never exhausted by your attention.”
How does a scholar so engrossed with ancient writings manage to bring a fresh, contemporary perspective to the classroom? “Bridging the ancient and the modern is something I aspire to in my teaching,” she offers. “For example, I might incorporate 20th-century re-imaginings of Sophocles’ Antigone, like Athol Fugard’s masterpiece The Island, into the syllabus, or include Christopher Logue’s recent renditions of scenes from Homer’s The Iliad. This spring I’m teaching my course on Antigone. Antigone is a work that shines differently with each reading—a heroine and a play that have confounded and attracted readers and viewers for centuries. At this moment, with issues of dissent and state power so obviously in the news, it is especially interesting to teach this text.”
Slatkin received her B.A. in Greek from Radcliffe College, her M.A. in Classics from Cambridge University, and her Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard University. Prior to joining the Gallatin faculty, she taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Yale University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago, where she received the prestigious Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. She came to Gallatin in 2002, and has found the environment extremely stimulating, not only as a teacher and adviser but as a scholar pursuing several exciting projects.
“Gallatin embodies the commitments I’ve hoped to sustain throughout my teaching and scholarly career—community engagement, student initiative, interdisciplinary work, close contact, and conversation. Here teaching and research are not seen as opposed but as mutually enriching; here, too, you really get a sense of students’ particular interests, projects, and goals: you’re not teaching to massive numbers, nor are you teaching only future specialists. Gallatin is really on the side of the broad education of citizens and this seems to me the best way to imagine higher education.”
Professor Slatkin authored The Power of Thetis (Berkeley: 1992) and coedited Histories of Post-War French Thought, Volume 2: Antiquities (with G. Nagy and N. Loraux, New Press, 2001). She has published numerous articles on Greek epic and drama and has served as editor in chief of Classical Philology, an international journal for which she now holds a place on the editorial board. Currently, she is working on a book project entitled British Romantic Homer and Beyond with Maureen N. McLane, a Harvard professor and romanticist. The book will examine why Homer emerges as a central figure in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially during a period of interest in oral culture. “We’re exploring an era when the notion of oral poetry is first getting developed—a concept that informs everything from the study of Homeric epic to slam poetry,” she shares. “This project is continuous with the notion of bridging the ancient and the modern, and also develops a kind of anthropological and media studies perspective.”
A second edition of Slatkin’s influential and widely admired The Power of Thetis is being published in 2008 by Harvard University Press, along with six of her essays on Greek epic. Slatkin notes that her recent work has been informed by the classes she’s taught and the dialogue she’s enjoyed at Gallatin.
“For me, much of intellectual life revolves around conversation. The Gallatin classroom is a place to participate in and encourage conversation, debate, and argument, as well as meditation. I enjoy my work as a professor because it’s a means for communicating my enthusiasm for Greek literature and for exploring perpetual questions about the human experience. My teaching supports the ongoing transmission of these wonderful texts and questions, making them new as the members of each class discover their own relation to antiquity.”