Judith P. Hallett
Professor Judith P. Hallett (jeph@umd.edu) specializes in Latin language and literature; ancient Roman and Greek civilization; women, sexuality and the family in classical antiquity; and the classical tradition in America.
Author of "Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women
and the Elite Family" (Princeton 1984), she has edited and contributed to
several collections of essays. Among them are "Six North American Women Classicists"
(special issue of Classical World, 1996-1997), for which she wrote the featured
article on Edith Hamilton; "Compromising Traditions: The Personal Voice in
Classical Scholarship," with Thomas Van Nortwick of Oberlin College (Routledge
1997); "Roman Sexualities," with Marilyn Skinner of the University of
Arizona (Princeton 1997); and "Rome and Her Monuments: Essays in Honor of
the City and Literature of Rome in Honor of Katherine A. Geffcken," with
Sheila Dickison of the University of Florida (Wauconda, Illinois 2000). She is
also the author of the four essays on classical Roman women writers in "Women
Writing Latin" (Routledge 2002), and of chapters in books, articles, reviews
and translations into both English and classical Latin.
Hallett received
her BA from Wellesley College and her MA and PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard
University. While attending Harvard, she studied at the American Academy in Rome;
after receiving her doctorate she spent a year at the Institute of Classical Studies
at the University of London. She was Blegen Visiting Scholar in Classics at Vassar
College, and has held Mellon teaching fellowships at both Brandeis University
and the Wellesley Center for Research on Women, and a research fellowship from
the National Endowment for the Humanities. Winner of the College of Arts and Humanities
Award for Excellence in Teaching, and honored by the Center for Excellence in
Teaching Celebrating Teachers program in 1994 and 2002, she was named a Distinguished
Scholar-Teacher in 1992-1993 and a Lilly-Center for Excellence in Teaching fellow
in 2002-2003.
From 1986 through 1994 Hallett was featured on “The Court of Ideas”, a long-running Canadian Broadcasting Company educational radio program, as an expert witness on the death of Cleopatra, the criminal conduct of the emperor Nero, the treasonable behavior of the British queen Boadicea, and the claims to equal rights of the Greek poet Sappho. She has been interviewed by Sander Vanocur from the History Channel/ A&E series “Movies in Time”: first on the re-broadcast of the British Broadcasting Company’s serialization of I, Claudius, and later on the airing of the 1963 film The Fall of the Roman Empire. Other History Channel/A&E appearances include the segment on Antony and Cleopatra for their 1998 Valentine’s Day special on the five greatest love affairs in history, and for their 1999 series on The History of Sex. A consultant on the 2001 PBS documentary series, The Roman Empire in the First Century funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, she appeared in all four of its episodes. In 2001 she co-organized the Historical Pathological Conference on the death of the emperor Claudius, and a coordinated conference on neuropsychiatric illness in the Julio-Claudian dynasty, at the University of Maryland Medical School. Since 2001 she has served on the Maryland Humanities Council, and since 2002 on the Board of Trustees, Baltimore Hebrew University.
