Kirk Ormand

Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published a book chapter in the new Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad, edited by Jonathan Ready. The volume contains critical essays by different scholars on each of the 24 books of the Iliad; Ormand's essay deals with book 19, in which Achilles renounces his anger, agrees to return to battle, and receives an prophecy from Xanthus, a talking horse.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published a new article in a volume of collected essays dealing with notions of temporality in ancient Greek and Latin literature. Ormand's essay, titled " 'But Now': The Temporality of Archaic Greek Invective" appears in Making Time for Greek and Latin Literature from Routledge Press, pp. 121-139. The volume is edited by Kate Gilhuly and Jeffrey Ulrich.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has been elected to the post of President of the Society for Classical Studies, the largest professional organization in North American for the study of the ancient Mediterranean world.  The SCS has approximately 2,800 members, and is dedicated to the study of the literature, history, archaeology, politics, religion, art, philosophy, and cultures of “classical” Greece and Rome, as well as their interaction with the other cultures of the ancient Mediterranean.

Professor Ormand will serve a three-year term: in January of 2024 he will become President-Elect; in January of 2025 he will assume the role of President; and in January 2026 he will serve as immediate Past-President.  Among his duties Professor Ormand will organize a Presidential Panel and deliver the Presidential Address at the January 2026 meeting of the SCS.

Professor Ormand is the first member of the Oberlin faculty to be elected to the position of SCS President, and is the second professor from a small liberal-arts College to be elected in the last 50 years.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published a new book, The Routledge Handbook of Classics and Queer Theory, coedited with Ella Haselswerdt and Sara Lindheim. The volume contains 32 essays by a group of scholars from the United States and Europe. Professor Ormand also wrote the introductory essay, titled "How Did We Get Here?" Available now from Routledge Press.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published a new article, "Did (Imaginary) Cinaedi Have Sex with Women?" in a volume of collected essays, Searching for the Cinaedus in Ancient Rome, eds. Tommaso Gazzari and Jesse Weiner (Brill Press, 2023). Ormand's chapter argues that although the Romans assumed normal men could be interested in homoerotic as well as heteroerotic encounters, one defining feature of the cinaedus was an exclusive preference for homoerotic sex. It argues further that this assumption operates independently of the use of cinaedus as a reproach for men who are not, in fact, thought to be cinaedi.

Professor Kirk Ormand recently delivered a paper at the Celtic Classical Conference, held at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), July 11-14. Ormand's paper, "The Materiality of Class in Greek Invective" examines the way that archaic Greek poets use bodily imagery in insult-poetry to attack, change, or deny the class status of their intended targets.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand recently published an article, “Intertheatricality and Narrative Structure in the Electra Plays,” in A Companion to Aeschylus, eds. J.A. Bromberg and P. Burian. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell (2023), 145-157.  Ormand analyzes the use that Sophocles and Euripides make of Aeschylus' Oreseteia, often casting events from it as fictional or contrafactual narratives spoken by the characters in their own plays on the Electra myth.

Professor Kirk Ormand and David Halperin (OC ’73) have recently edited and published John J. ("Jack") Winkler's last book: Rehearsals of Manhood: Athenian Drama in Social Practice.

Professor Winkler delivered the book in progress as part of Oberlin's Martin Lectures Series in 1988 and was in the process of completing it for publication in 1990 when he passed away from complications arising from HIV infection. Ormand and Halperin have now updated that nearly-complete manuscript with references to scholarship from the last thirty years, edited the argument, and secured permissions for the 50+ images that Winkler wished included in the volume. The book will be available this February from Princeton University Press, the latest volume in the Martin Lectures series.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has had one of his essays (originally published in French) published in English. "Perversion in Antiquity? Foucault, Seneca, and Psychiatric Reasoning," appears in Foucault, Sexuality, Antiquity, edited by Sandra Boehringer and Daniele Lorenzini (Routledge 2022), pp. 47-64. The essay originally appeared as “Peut-on parler de perversion dans l'Antiquité? Foucault et l'invention du raisonnement psychiatrique,” in  Foucault, la sexualité, l’Antiquité, eds. S. Boehringer and D. Lorenzini.

(Éditions Kimé, 2016).

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand recently participated in a conference sponsored by the project AVISA and the Maison de Sciences de l'Homme of the Université Paris-Saclay, on the topic of  "Le harcèlement sexuel dans l'antiquité et sa réception contemporaine," ("Sexual harassment in antiquity and its contemporary reception") June 6-7, 2022. Professor Ormand's paper was titled "Can we speak of sexual harassment in the Athenian courts?"

Professor Kirk Ormand recently published an article, “Ovid’s Hermaphroditus and the mollis Male,” in Ramus 51 (2022): 74-104. In this piece, Ormand examines Ovid's telling of the story of Hermaphroditus in comparison to the Roman sculptural and painted traditions of the intersexed Greek divinity from the first century CE.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published a new article, "Into the Queer Ionisphere," in a volume of essays titled Queer Euripides: Re-Readings in Greek Tragedy, eds. Sarah Olsen and Mario Telo (Bloomsbury, 2022), pp. 120-129. The volume provides queer readings of all nineteen of the Athenian playwright Euripides' extant plays. Ormand's essay discusses the play Ion, examining its manipulation of secret familial and political identities in the service of Athenian citizenship. Queer Euripides is available at finer booksellers everywhere.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand presented a paper at a conference at Wellesley College October 15-17. The conference explored notions of temporality in ancient Greece and Rome, and Ormand's talk, “Temporality and Class in Archaic Invective,” explored the relationship between social class, insult,  and temporal change in the poets Archilochus, Hipponax, and Semonides.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published an article titled "Sex and the City" in the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens, edited by Jenifer Neils and Dylan Rogers (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Ormand's article gives an overview of the legal, literary, archaeological, and art-historical evidence for marital and extramarital sexual activity in the city of fifth-century BCE Athens. He analyzes the regulations and social expectations governing marriage, sex-work, and the relation of sexual activity to civic membership.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has been awarded the Paul Rehak Prize by the Lambda Classical Caucus of the Society for Classical Studies. The award is given each year to an outstanding article from the past three years "relating to the LCC's mission, including, but not limited to, homosocial and homoerotic relationships and environments, ancient sexuality and gender roles, and representation of the gendered body."

Ormand received the prize for his essay, "Atalanta and Sappho: Women in and out of Time," in Narratives of Time and Gender in Antiquity, edited by Esther Eidenow and Lisa Maurizio (2020).

Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand reviewed Marlaine Delargy's translation into English of Theodor Kallifatides' The Siege of Troy (Other Press, 2019). Ormand's review appears in Reading in Translation, the online literary review of translated works, edited by Associate Professor Stiliana Milkova.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has been awarded a fellowship at the Université de Strasbourg Institut d'Etudes Avancées / University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study (USIAS) for the fall of 2020, when he will be on leave. Ormand will use his time in Strasbourg to begin a book on archaic Greek invective poetry.

Kirk Ormand, Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics, published the article, "Atalanta and Sappho: Women in and out of Time," in a volume titled Narratives of Time and Gender in Antiquity, edited by Esther Eidenow and Lisa Maurizio. Ormand's article deals with a recently discovered poem of Sappho (the Cologne papyrus, published in 2004, which supplements the previous fr. 58). He argues that in this poem, Sappho conceives of an ongoing poetic present tense that approximates, but does not achieve, an immortal experience of time.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand published an article in a volume titled A Cultural History of Tragedy in Antiquity (Bloomsbury academic, 2020) edited by Emily Wilson. Ormand's article "Gender and Sexuality" appears in pp. 131-18. In it, Ormand summarizes the depiction of masculinity and femininity in Greek and Roman tragedy, and argues that the gender-based anxieties expressed on those dramas reflect shifts and points of tension in the social and political structures of fifth-century BCE Athens and first century CE Rome.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand organized and co-chaired a panel at the meeting of the Society for Classical Studies (Jan. 2-5, Washington DC), in collaboration with Kristina Milnor of Barnard College / Columbia University. Ormand's panel, titled "Lesbianism before Sexuality" consisted of five scholars from the US and UK, each of whom presented a paper investigating different aspects of female homoerotic desire in ancient Greece and Rome. Sandra Boehringer of the Université de Strasbourg offered a response.