| department of classics
The Department of Classics at UCSB is delighted to announce that Helen Morales, currently Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge, will be joining our faculty on January 1, 2009.
Dr. Morales received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University and has taught at the University of Reading, Arizona State University, and Cambridge (from 2001), where she is also a Fellow of Newnham College. In 1998-9 she was a Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC.
 She is a leading international figure in the interpretation of the ancient Greek novel, with strong interests in fiction, the relations between art and text, and gender studies. Her 2004 monograph, a study ofVision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (Cambridge U.P.), offers a fresh reading of the Greek novel in its cultural, literary and visual contexts (“the razor’s edge of ancient novel studies today” - Times Literary Supplement). She has broad interests in literary criticism, ancient and modern; co-edited the volume Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations (Oxford U.P. 2000) and also co-edits Ramus, the international Classics journal devoted to critical readings of ancient texts. Her latest volume, co-edited with Simon Goldhill, is Dying for Josephus (Aureal Publications, 2008).
Dr. Morales has the kind of interdisciplinary outlook for which UCSB is increasingly noted. At Cambridge she was co-organizer of seminars and symposia on histories of sexuality, on ancient ideas about shame, and on the ancient Jewish historian Josephus. She also served on the Management Committee of the Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, and co-organised a major conference on new solutions to old gender problems (with speakers including Catherine MacKinnon, Carole Pateman, John Dupre, and Haleh Afshar). Following her participation in a series of externally-funded seminars on Art and Law (with the Arts Council of Great Britain and Kings College Research Centre), Dr Morales, together with Simon Goldhill, is writing a book on the problems that the law has with art (and vice versa).
Her interests in the past are always connected to major contemporary concerns – leadership, class, race, feminism, aesthetics, law – a better understanding of which, she insists, comes through appreciating their investment in the Classics. Her latest book, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction (in Oxford’s Very Short Introductions series) is a good example of this, highlighting not only ancient mythology in its original contexts, but also its impact on art, politics, philosophy and literature throughout the ages, from Freud and Mozart to Rockefeller and New Age goddess worship. She is therefore a natural “fit” for our lecture courses in translation, as well as for our more specialized and graduate courses, above all our survey of Greek Mythology that every quarter packs IV Theater I with 500 students. She has done consultancy work for the Royal National Theatre, reviews books for a wide range of journals including the Times Literary Supplement, and is in demand as a speaker on the radio (most recently on Tibor Fischer’s program on the ancient novel on BBC Radio 4).
Among her current projects are, launching a new Penguin Classics on Greek Fiction (with translations of Chariton, Longus, and Chion of Heraclea), and starting a major new research project on a cultural history of incest in antiquity.
And how does she feel about coming to Santa Barbara? “Thrilled! What’s exciting about UCSB Classics is its real commitment to teaching it in a truly interdisciplinary way: as part of intellectual history, as part of cultural studies. It’s a department that is on the up-and-up – with a growing PhD program, bold new research initiatives in modern and ancient Hellenic Studies, the Getty Villa on the doorstep – I couldn’t be happier.”
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