David Wray

David Wray

David Wray (Ph.D. Harvard University, 1996) is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and the College and Chair of Comparative Literature. He is the author of Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood (Cambridge 2001) and is currently writing Phaedra's Virtue: Ethics, Gender, and Seneca's Tragedy. His research and teaching interests include Hellenistic and Roman poetry (especially Apollonius Rhodius, Catullus, Lucretius, Virgil, Tibullus, Ovid, Seneca, Lucan, and Statius); Greek epic and tragedy; Roman philosophy; ancient and modern relations between literature and philosophy; gender; theory and practice of literary translation; and the reception of Greco-Roman thought and literature, from Shakespeare and Corneille to Pound and Zukofsky. He is a member of the University's Poetry and Poetics program.

Contact

Department of Classics
1115 E. 58th St
Chicago, IL 60637
tel.: 773-702-8563
email: dlwray@uchicago.edu

Honors and Awards

  • 2001-2002, Franke Institute for the Humanities fellow, University of Chicago
  • 1980, Scholarship from Emory University chapter of Eta Sigma Phi, for summer study at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens
  • 1979, Phi Beta Kappa, Emory University

Publications

Book

  • Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood (Cambridge University Press 2001).

Articles and Contributions to Edited Volumes

  • "Apollonius' Masterplot: A Reading of Argonautica I," in Hellenistica Groningana IV: Apollonius Rhodius, ed. M. A. Harder et al. (Groningen 2000) 239-65.
  • "Lucretius," in Dictionary of Literary Biography: Roman Authors, ed. W. W. Briggs (Detroit 1999).
  • "Attis' Groin Weights (Catullus 63.5)," Classical Philology 96 (2001): 120-26.
  • "What Poets Do: Tibullus on 'Easy' Hands," Classical Philology (forthcoming).
  • "Manly Matrons and Stoic Ethics in Seneca and Valerius Maximus," American Journal of Philology (forthcoming).

Reviews

  • The Odes of Horace, tr. David Ferry, in Modernism/Modernity 6 (1999): 169-171.
  • The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature, S. Braund and C. Gill, eds., in Classical Philology 94 (1999): 481-6.
  • Christopher Nappa, Aspects of Catullus' Social Fiction, in Journal of Roman Studies 92 (2002): 234.
  • Don Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, in Journal of Roman Studies (forthcoming).
  • Roland Mayer, Seneca: Phaedra, Classical Review (forthcoming).

Literary translations

  • "Theocritus, Thyrsis and the Goatherd (Idyll 1)," Near South (Spring 2001): 12-18.
  • "How to be Tibullus (Elegiae 1.1)," Chicago Review 48.4 (Winter 2002/3): 102-7.

Works in progress

  • Phaedra's Virtue: Ethics, Gender, and Seneca's Tragedy (book).
  • Seneca and the Self, multiauthor volume coedited with Shadi Bartsch.
  • Translation of Seneca's Phaedra for the Chicago Seneca Project, a new translation of the complete prose and poetic works of Seneca to be published by the University of Chicago Press and edited by Shadi Bartsch, Martha Nussbaum, Elizabeth Asmis and David Wray.
  • Edition and introduction of a volume of the Latin translations of Louis Zukofsky (the poems of Catullus and Plautus' Rudens), under consideration by the University of Chicago Press.
  • "Statius and the Poetics of Wood," to appear in David Larmour and Diana Spencer, eds., The Sites of Rome: Time, Space, Memory.
  • "'cool rare air': Zukofsky's Breathing with Catullus and Plautus," to appear in Chicago Review.
  • Review of Paul Veyne, Seneca: The Life of a Stoic, to appear in Classical Review.

Most Recent Courses Taught

  • GREK 45700 Seminar: Pindar: Gods, Titans, and the Ode (with Mark Payne)
  • LATN 31400 Lucretius
  • LATN 32700 Latin Poetry Survey
  • LATN 31300 Vergil
  • CLAS 37200 Aeneids in Translation
  • LATN 31100 Roman Elegy