Associate Professor of Classics
Pramit Chaudhuri specializes in the Latin poetry of the early Roman empire, set within a broader study of classical epic and tragedy. His new book explores literary depictions of "theomachy" (conflicts between humans and gods) and their mediation of issues such as religious conflict, philosophical iconoclasm, political struggle, and poetic rivalry. He is currently working on three principal projects: a book on the representation of debate and diplomacy in Roman epic and historiography; a collaborative project with researchers from Harvard University on computational approaches to intertextuality; and a book series on genre designed for a general readership. Other areas of research and teaching include the reception of classical antiquity in early modern epic and tragedy and in Renaissance painting.
Book: The War with God: Theomachy in Roman Imperial Poetry (Oxford, 2014).
Edited Book: Reception and the Classics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Classical Tradition, with W Brockliss, A Haimson Lushkov, and K Wasdin (Cambridge, 2012).
Article: "Classical Quotation in Titus Andronicus," ELH: English Literary History (Forthcoming 2014).
Article: "Flaminius' failure? Intertextual characterization in Silius Italicus and Statius," Flavian Interactions, eds. Manuwald and Voigt (De Gruyter, 2013).
Article: “Naming nefas: Cleopatra on the Shield of Aeneas,” Classical Quarterly 62 (2012) 223-6.
Review of A Videau, “La poétique d’Ovide, de l’élégie à l’épopée des métamorphoses: essai sur un style dans l’histoire,” American Journal of Philology 133 (2012) 528-31.
Review of A Feldherr, “Playing Gods. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Politics of Fiction,” Classical Review 62 (2012) 160-1.
"Diplomacy and doubling in Statius' Thebaid," Celtic Conference in Classics, Edinburgh, June 2014
Works in progress
Book: The Ambassadors: Debate and Diplomacy in Roman Epic