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Faculty of Classics

 

Biography

Carol Atack returned to Cambridge in 2019, after holding teaching positions in Classics at Oxford and Warwick, and working on the Anachronism and Antiquity project at the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford. 

Research

Ancient Greek political thought, historiography, gender and sexuality, classical reception.

Publications

Key publications: 

Anachronism and Antiquity (2020), with Tim Rood and Tom Phillips, Bloomsbury Academic.

The Discourse of Kingship in Classical Greece (2019), Routledge Classical Monographs. 

‘Plato’s Queer Time: dialogic moments in the life and death of Socrates’ (2020), Classical Receptions JournalAnachronism and Antiquity special issue, Vol 12, Issue 1, pp. 10-31.

 ‘“I will interpret”: the Eighth Letter as a response to Plato’s literary method and political thought’ (2019), Classical Quarterly Vol. 69, Issue 2, pp. 616-35.

‘Tradition and innovation in the polis-kosmos analogy’, (2019) in P. Horky (ed.) Ancient Cosmos: Concord among Worlds, Cambridge University Press, pp. 164-187.

‘Plato, Foucault and the conceptualization of parrhēsia’ (2019), History of Political Thought Vol. 40, Issue 1, pp. 23-48.

Politeia and the past in Xenophon and Isocrates’ (2018), in M. Tamiolaki (ed.) ‘Xenophon and Isocrates. Political Affinities and Literary Interactions’, Trends in Classics Vol. 10, Issue 1, pp. 171-194.

‘Xenophon and the performativity of kingship’ (2018), in D. Allen, P. Christesen and P. Millett (edd.), How To Do Things With History, Oxford University Press, pp. 109-135.

‘Plato’s Statesman and Xenophon’s Cyrus’ (2018), in G. Danzig, D. Johnson and D. Morrison (edd.), Plato and Xenophon: comparative studies, Brill, pp. 510-543.

‘Imagined Superpowers: Isocrates on Athens and Sparta’ (2018), in A. Powell and P. Cartledge (edd.) The Greek Superpower: Sparta in the Self-Definitions of Athenians, Classical Press of Wales, pp. 157-184.

‘Aristotle’s pambasileia and the metaphysics of monarchy’ (2015), Polis Vol. 32, Issue 2, pp. 297-320.

‘The discourse of kingship in classical Athenian thought’ (2014), Histos Vol. 8, pp. 329-362.

Director of Studies in Classics, Bye-fellow and assistant tutor, Newnham College.
Dr Carol  Atack
Not available for consultancy

Affiliations

Latest news

Kennedy Professorship of Latin

19 January 2026

The Faculty is delighted to announce that Professor Christopher Whitton has accepted election to the Kennedy Professorship of Latin from 1 October 2026.

Professor Nicholas Zair awarded Leverhulme Research Fellowship

8 January 2026

The Faculty is pleased to announce that Professor Nicholas Zair has been awarded a 3 year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship from 2026-2029 for his project Understanding Oscan. The Fellowship will allow Nick to spend the next three years working on Oscan, which was spoken widely across Southern Italy between the fifth...

Dr Ben Gray, Assistant Professor in Classics (Ancient History)

20 October 2025

The Faculty is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Ben Gray ( Birkbeck, University of London) as Assistant Professor in Classics (Ancient History) from 1st January 2026.

“Decoding the Desert” and “Middleton’s Architectural Odysseys” now on CUDL

29 September 2025

Two collections from the Faculty Archives, the photographs of archaeologists Richard Norton and Richard Goodchild in Libya, and notebooks of Victorian architect J. H. Middleton, have been digitised and are available to view on the Cambridge University Digital Library. A gift from the family of Professor Joyce Reynolds -...