Laura Slatkin

Laura Slatkin studied Classical Philology at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. She is Professor of Classical Studies at New York University (Gallatin School) and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago; she also teaches in NYU's Prison Education Program. Her scholarly work has focused on early Greek poetry and Athenian drama; her recent publications include The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays (Center for Hellenic Studies-Harvard University Press, 2011) and articles on Homeric epics and on Aeschylus' Persae and Sophocles' Antigone. At the MPIWG, she plans to pursue a project that has its origins in the workshop there in 1999–2000 on the “Moral Authority of Nature”; her current focus is on the semantic range and conceptual status of phusis ("nature”) and related lexical terms in 5th-century BCE Greek literature, with an emphasis on Athenian tragedy. She served as editor-in-chief of the journal Classical Philology and is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies.