Dr. Alexander Sens
Joseph Durkin, SJ, Professor of Classics
Office: 322 Healy Hall
ph: 202.687.7634
email: sensa@georgetown.edu
Fall 2009 Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday 1:30-3:00pm and by appointment
Download Prof. Sens' full cv here.
Education:
BA Brown, 1986
MA, Harvard, 1989
PhD, Harvard 1991Teaching & Research Areas:
Greek and Latin language and literature, especially Hellenistic and late Classical Greek poetry
About Professor Sens:
Professor Sens primarily teaches courses in Greek and Latin language and literature. He is particularly interested in the way that poets locate themselves in an ongoing literary tradition by alluding to and engaging with the works of their predecessors. In courses in translation, he is interested in introducing students to the ways in which ancient authors both created and played with the boundaries of genre. His goal is for students at all levels to be able to think independently about the ways in which ancient authors defined their own projects against the background of the various literary traditions they were working with.
Current Research:
Professor Sens has recently completed a full-scale commentary on the epigrams of Asclepiades of Samos, one of the most influential poets of the early 3rd century BCE. He is currently working on a commentary on select Hellenistic epigrams for the Cambridge "Green and Yellow" series, as well as on two projects with Georgetown colleagues: with Professor Josiah Osgood, he is editing a collection of essays for the proceedings of a conference on "Greek Poets in Italy" that the department sponsored at the Villa Le Balze in 2007, and he and Professor Charles McNelis are working on a book-length study of Lycophron. Finally, he plans to collaborate with Professor Marco Fantuzzi (Columbia/Macerata) on a commentary on the corpus of Hellenistic epigrams having to do with poetry.
Selected Publications:
Archestratos of Gela: Greek Culture and Cuisine in the Fourth Century BCE [with S.D. Olson] (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Archestratos of Gela's Life of Luxury is a fundamental source for our understanding not only of fourth-century literature but also of the significance of food and dining, and the reception of epic poetry in the late classical period. This edition is based on a fresh examination of the manuscripts and is the first to combine a critical text of the poem with a translation, a detailed commentary, and an extensive introduction situating the work in its literary, social, and cultural context.
Matro of Pitane and the Tradition of Epic Parody in the Fourth Century BCE [with S.D. Olson] ([American Philological Association Monographs 44], Scholar's Press and Oxford University Press,1999)
Theocritus: Dioscuri (Idyll 22). Introduction, Text, and Commentary. ([Hypomnemata vol. 114] Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997)
"Lycophron, the Catalog of Ships, and Homeric Geography," forthcoming in C. Cusset, E. Prioux, eds, Lycophron: eclats d' obscurite, Lyon and St. Etienne.
"Hellenistic Poetry," forthcoming in G. Boys-Stone, B. Graziosi, P. Vasunia, eds., Oxford Companion of Hellenic Studies.
"Tragedy and Lycophron's Alexandra," forthcoming in J. Clauss, M. Cuypers, eds. Blackwell Companion to Hellenistic Literature.
"One Thing Leads (Back) to Another: Allusion and the Invention of Tradition," in P. Bing and J. Bruss, eds., Brill Companion to Hellenistic Epigram (Leiden, 2007) 373-90.
"tipte genos toumon zeteis?': The Batrachomyomachia, Hellenistic Epic Parody, and Early Epic," in F. Montanari and A. Rengakos, eds. La poesie epique grecque: metamorphoses d'un genre litteraire (Entretiens Hardt, 2006) 215-48.
Asclepiades of Samos: Epigrams and Fragments, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
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