My interest in ancient and modern Greece grows out of my work in Classical philology. For some years it has centered on ethnopoetics. This can be defined as the study of verbal art in its cultural setting, as distinguished from a universalizing poetics of the Aristotelian type, which attempts to abstract from individual places and times general rules of art. The inspiration for the sort of work that interests me comes, in large part, from the fieldwork of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, who in the 1930s recorded thousands of songs in the former Yugoslavia in the interest of comparative poetic research. (See now for digitized Parry collection materials: [link]. Folklore, social anthropology, the study of performance, and linguistics all contribute to my approach. Homeric poetry remains my primary interest within Classical studies, and a main comparandum in my fieldwork.

For further details of my published work and course syllabi visit [link]

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