Richard Hamilton
Paul Shorey Professor of Greek
PhD University of Michigan
Office: Thomas Hall 246
Phone: 610/526-5399
Email: rhamilto@brynmawr.edu
Personal Statement:
My hunch, at the beginning of this century (!), that survey seminars were a good thing both for me and my students has crystallized (congealed?) into a conviction, so much so that this past spring I reached further than I probably should have to teach a seminar in "Greek Hexameter". We ended up doing much less meter than I expected and became much more involved with Hellenistic poetry than I had anticipated (based on my dreary experience back in the late 70s): Nicander still remains low on my list of must-reads, but Aratus has moved close to the top, along with Apollonius and Callimachus.
This year, I was planning to repeat the survey of Greek lyric poetry that I taught three years ago but was offered the opportunity to team-teach an iconography seminar with my much more sophisticated colleagues, Dale Kinney (History of Art) and Mehmet-Ali Ataç (Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology). Since my religious iconography book is not quite finished, I saw this as a chance both to bring it to a close and to weigh its results in a totally new context. Also, as director of the Graduate Group, which funds these cooperative seminars, it is important that I contribute actively instead of simply paying the bills.
My other project is to revise Cecelia Lushnig's fine elementary Greek textbook, last printed in 1976, which seems to me to offer an accessible but rigorous introduction that can bring students through most of Greek grammar in one term without permanent injury. We managed that this last year, in large part thanks to my excellent assistant, Eric Hutchinson, and I think we can do it again.
Research Interests:
Greek literature, Greek religion, Greek iconography
Courses:
Greek Tragedy, Archaic Greek Lyric, Delos
Recent Publications:
Treasure Map: A Guide to the Delian Inventories , University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, 2000)
"Lenaia Vases in Context", in Poetry, Theory, Praxis ed. E. Csapo and Margaret Miller (Oxford: Oxbow 2003) 48-68.
