Archaic and Classical Greek Literature; Choral Song; Classical Mythology
Deborah Steiner, John Jay Professor of Greek and Latin, grew up in England, and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard, Oxford and the University of California at Berkeley. She has taught at Columbia since 1994, and currently lives with her husband, two children and dog in Princeton, New Jersey. Current research interests include Homeric poetry, the early symposium, choral dancing in art and poetry, and the archaic fable. Among her publications are books on representations of writing in archaic and classical Greece (The Tyrant’s Writ; Princeton 1994), the place of statues in the Greek literature, philosophy and religion (Images in Mind, Princeton 2001), and a commentary on books 17 and 18 of the Odyssey (Cambridge 2010); her articles include several discussions of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, readings of the Greek iambic poets and the discourse of mockery and abuse, explorations of the interactions between Greek ritual and early Greek poetry, and analyses of images on early Greek vases. Awards include a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies and an American Philosophical Society fellowship. Deborah Steiner webpage.