Fourth-century Greek Prose; Ancient Philosophy; Performance
Marcus Folch joined the Columbia Classics Department in 2009, after receiving his B.A. in Classics from Cornell University in 2000 and his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University in 2006. From 2007-2009 he was Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Richmond; from 2006-2007 he was Visiting Lecturer in Classical Studies also at the University of Richmond. His main interests include ancient Greek literature, philosophy, rhetoric, performance studies, gender theory, and the history of punishment and incarceration. His first book, The Polis and the Stage: Performance, Genre, and Gender in Plato’s Laws, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. His second book project is entitled Bondage, Incarceration, and the Prison in Ancient Greece and Rome: A Cultural and Literary History; it offers (as the title suggests) a history of incarceration and the prison in the ancient world. Marcus Folch webpage.
Sample Publications
The Polis and the Stage: Performance, Genre, and Gender in Plato’s Laws. (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2015).
“Who Calls the Tune: Literary Criticism, Theatrocracy, and the Performance of Philosophy in Plato’s Laws,” American Journal of Philology, 134.4: 557-601, Winter 2013.
“The Unideal Genres and the Ideal City: Comedy, Threnody, and the Making of Citizens in Plato’s Laws,” in A.-E. Peponi (ed.), Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws. Cambridge University Press, 339-367, 2013.
“Engendering Harmony: Performance and the Status of Women in Plato’s Laws” (under review with Classical Antiquity).
Review of G. R. Boys-Stones and J. H. Haubold (ed.), Plato and Hesiod. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 02.18.2011.
Review of D.S. Allen, Why Plato Wrote. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 134: 264 – 265, 2012.