Classics

Kirk Freudenburg received his BA from Valparaiso University, and an MA in Classics from Washington University in St. Louis.  He took his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, where he wrote a dissertation under the direction of Denis Feeney.  Before coming to Yale he taught at Kent State University, Ohio State University and the University of Illinois.  At Ohio State he was Associate Dean of the Humanities and at Illinois he was Chair of the Department of Classics.  His research has long focused on the social life of Roman letters, especially on the unique cultural encodings that structure and inform Roman ideas of poetry, and the practical implementation of those ideas in specific poetic forms, especially satire. His main publications include: The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire (Princeton, 1993), Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal (Cambridge, 2001), and the Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge, 2005).  Currently he is writing a commentary on the second book of Horace’s Sermones for the Cambridge Green and Yellows, and he is editing a volume of essays, Oxford Readings in Horace II: Sermones and Epistles.