Greek Comedy and Tragedy; Plato
Elizabeth Scharffenberger received an A.B. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has taught at Columbia for many years and has also taught at Yale, NYU, Vassar, and Washington University in St. Louis, and she currently serves as the director of the department’s post-baccalaureate certificate program and the supervisor of the department’s graduate Teaching Fellows. In addition to teaching a variety of courses for the department, she enjoys teaching courses in the College’s core curriculum and recently delivered a paper at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association about comic texts in core curricula and “Great Books” courses. She has published on Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, and Plato. Her current research projects include a study of modern adaptations of Aristophanic comedy, an examination of contemporary feminist revisions of the myths of Helen and Jocasta, an examination of the reworking of Homeric narrative patterns in Plato’s Republic, and a paper on the reception of Euripidean tragedy by comedians active in the mid-fourth century BCE. She serves on the board of directors of the Comparative Drama Conference and has just finished a three-year term as a member of the American Philological Association’s Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance. Recent Publications: “Aristophanic Imaginings: Reflections on Martin Revermann’s Comic Business” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 15 (2008). “Deinon Eribremetas: The Sound and Sense of ‘Aeschylus’ in Aristophanes’ Frogs,” Classical World 100 (2007). Elisabeth Scharffenberger webpage.