Christina S. Kraus

Thomas A. Thacher Professor of Latin.

Chris Kraus received her BA from Princeton and PhD from Harvard. She taught at New York University, University College London, and Oxford University before coming to Yale in the summer of 2004. She has research interests in ancient narrative (especially historiography and tragedy), Latin prose style, and the theory and practice of commentaries. She is a member of the program in Renaissance Studies.

Kraus book covers She reviews frequently for Classical Review and Bryn Mawr Classical Review (for which she is also on the editorial board), and serves on the advisory boards of The Oxford History of Historical Writing and of Trends in Classics (de Gruyter).She gave the 2009 Martin Classical Lectures at Oberlin College on the topic, "Tacitean polyphonies: The Agricola and its scholarly reception" and is currently working, in collaboration with A. J. Woodman, on a commentary on Tacitus’s Agricola for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series.

Selected Recent Publications

The classical commentary: Histories, practices, theory
(ed., with R. K. Gibson, Leiden 2002)
"Hair, hegemony, and historiography: Caesar’s style and its earliest critics",
pp. 97-115 in Aspects of the language of Latin prose,
edd. J. N. Adams, M. Lapidge, and T. Reinhardt (Oxford 2005)
Visualizing the tragic: Drama, myth, and ritual in Greek art and literature
(ed., with S. Goldhill, H. P. Foley, and J. Elsner, Oxford 2007)
"Bellum Gallicum", pp. 159-74 in A companion to Julius Caesar,
ed. M. T. Griffin, Blackwell 2009
Oxford readings in classical subjects: Livy
(ed., with J. D. Chaplin, Oxford 2009)
Ancient historiography and its contexts
(ed., with J. Marincola and C. Pelling, Oxford 2010)

Featured Courses This Year

CLCV 255/LITR 159

Introduction to Latin Literature

Spring 2013, T, Th 1-2:15 Areas: HU

This course fulfills the area requirement in the humanities and arts (HU)

This course offers a cultural and intellectual history of classical Rome through readings of its surviving literature, in translation. Topics include: the self-invention of Roman literature and its negotiation with literary competitors; the relationship between literature and power in the late Republic; women and writing;

imperial expansion and the struggles with traditional values; theatrical spectacle, games, and the image of the barbarian.