Spring 2004

Dr. Gregory Nagy, Professor
Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature
Professor of Comparative Literature
Harvard University
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Professor Nagy was educated at Indiana University
and Harvard University, where he studied Classical Philology and Linguistics,
receiving his Ph.D. in 1966. He has held positions at Johns Hopkins University
and since 1975 in Harvard University, where he was named in 1984 the Francis
Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative
Literature. He also is currently the Curator of the Milman Parry Collection
of Oral Literature and the Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies
in Washington, D.C. Professor Nagy has served as Chair of the Harvard University
Classics Department and as President of the American Philological Association.
Professor Nagy is a renowned authority in the field Homeric and related
Greek studies. His numerous honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the
Goodwin Award of Merit of the American Philological Association for his
book, The Best of the Achaeans (1979). In addition to this path-breaking
work, he has published Greek Dialects and the Transformation of an Indo-European
Process (1970), Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (1974), Pindar's
Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (1990), Greek Mythology and
Poetics (1990), Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond (1996), and Homeric
Questions (1996); he has as well edited or co-edited various volumes and
written almost a hundred articles and reviews.
Professor Nagy has lectured widely in North America and Europe on a great
range of topics, especially concentrated in Homeric and Archaic Greek questions.
He is a strong proponent of the use of technology in teaching, and in the
teaching and use of student writing in the core curriculum.