Athena Kirk

Athena Kirk is Associate Professor of Classics at Cornell University. Her research focuses broadly on ancient Greek literature. She studies the intersections between literature and documentary texts, the material qualities of ancient texts, and public interaction with them; her book Ancient Greek Lists (Cambridge, 2021) connects the discourses of literary and epigraphic texts to elucidate a poetics of Greek list-making across poetry, prose, and inscriptions. Her current book project focuses on questions of materiality in the nonhuman world, and the operations of ancient animals and objects. She is also preparing a translation of selected essays of the Roman philosopher and biographer Plutarch. Professor Kirk is interested in the public-facing humanities and the future of literature and foreign language in higher education, and more generally in the balance of interior intellectualism and interpersonal connection in liberal education.