Kathryn Morgan

A photo of Kathryn Morgan
E-mail: kmorgan@humnet.ucla.edu Phone: 310-7941766 Office: Dodd Hall 240A

Kathryn Morgan is Joan Palevsky Professor of Classics at UCLA. Her interests range broadly over Greek literature of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. She regularly teaches graduate seminars in Attic tragedy, Pindar and Greek lyric, and Plato, and her research moves between projects connected with Plato and with Pindar. The former is represented by her book Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato, and by her ongoing involvement in the series Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative (published by Brill), where she is responsible for the chapters covering Plato. Her next book, Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy in the Fifth Century B.C. (2015), was a groundbreaking reading of the poetry written by Pindar for Hieron of Syracuse, arguing that the victory odes and other occasional songs composed by Pindar for the Sicilian tyrant were part of an extensive cultural program that included athletic competition, coinage, architecture, sanctuary dedication, city foundation, and much more.  Ongoing research includes projects on historical narrative in the Persians of Aeschylus, Pindaric politics, and Plato’s transformative appropriation of Athenian comedy and Greek lyric. Her current book project centers on how Plato engaged with the emerging genre of Greek historiography, particularly Thucydides.  She has served on the Program Committee, Board of Directors, and the Nominating Committee of the Society for Classical Studies, and was department Chair at UCLA from 2014-2020.  In 2004 she was honored with Distinguished Teaching Awards from the American Philological Association and UCLA (Distinction in Teaching at the Graduate Level).  In Fall 2023 she was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Education

  • Ph.D., Classics, University of California, Berkeley (1991)
  • M.A., Greek, University of California, Berkeley (1984)
  • B.A., Greek and Latin summa cum laude, Bryn Mawr College (1982)

Research

  • Classical Greek Literature and Culture
  • Greek Intellectual History
  • Plato
  • Pindar

Books

Articles

 

  • “Sophia before the Sophists.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists, edited by J. Billings and C. Moore. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023: 33-68.
  • “Parmenides and the Language of Constraint.” In Hesiod and the Beginnings of Greek Philosophy, edited by H. Koning and L. Iribarren. Leiden: Brill, 2022: 221-238.
  • “Paying the Price: Contextualizing Exchange in Phaedo 69a–c.” Rhizomata 8.2 (2020): 239-267. https://doi.org/10.1515/rhiz-2020-0011.
  • “Eros in the Platonic Frame.” In Framing the Dialogues. How to Read Openings and Closures in Plato, edited by Eleni Kaklamanou, Maria Pavlou, and Antonis Tsakmakis.  Leiden: Brill, 2020: 154-175.
  • “Simonides and the Diplomacy of Victory.” In Simonides Lyricus. Essays on the ‘Other’ Classical Choral Lyric Poet, edited by Peter Agócs and Lucia Prauscello.  Cambridge Classical Journal, supplementary volume 42.  Cambridge: The Cambridge Philological Society, 2020: 151-175.
  • “Plato.” In Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature.  Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative, Volume Four, edited by Koen de Temmerman and Evert van Emde Boas.  Leiden: Brill, 2018: 445-464.
  • “Plato’s Goat-Stags and the Uses of Comparison.” In Plato and the Power of Images, edited by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III and Pierre Destrée.  Leiden: Brill, 2017: 179-198.
  • “Epic and Comedy in Plato’s Protagoras.” In Plato’s Poetics. Essays from Beijing, edited by Rick Benitez and Keping Wang.  Berrima Glen Berrima, 2016: 151-169.
  • “Domesticating Invective in Plato’s Laws.” In Savage Words: Invective as a Literary Genre, edited by Massimo Ciavolella and Gianluca Rizzo.  New York: Agincourt Press, 2016: 106-126.
  • “Solon in Plato.” In Solon in the Making: The Early Reception in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries, edited by Gregory Nagy and Maria Noussia-Fantuzzi.  Trends in Classics 7.1 (2015): 129-150.
  • “Autochthony and Identity in Greek Myth.” In A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic, edited by D. Hammer. Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2015: 67-82.
  • “Praise and Performance in Plato’s Laws.”  In Mousikē, Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws, edited by A. Peponi.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013: 265-293.
  • “Imaginary Kings: Visions of Monarchy in Sicilian Literature from Pindar to Theokritos.” In Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome, edited by Claire L. Lyons, Michael Bennett, and Clemente Marconi.  Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2013: 98-105.