Katharina Volk
Department Chair
Professor of Classics
(212) 854-5683
kv2018@columbia.edu
614 Hamilton Hall
Spring 2026 Office hours: Mondays 2:30-4 p.m. & by appointment
Research Interests
Latin literature of the late Republican and early Imperial periods
Roman philosophy, esp. Cicero
Intellectual History
Katharina Volk has been teaching at Columbia since 2002. A Latinist specializing in the literature of the late Republic and early Empire, she has a particular interest in intellectual history and Roman philosophy.
Professor Volk is the author of The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius (Oxford 2002), Manilius and his Intellectual Background (Oxford 2009; recipient of the 2010 Lionel Trilling Book Award), Ovid (Malden, MA 2010), The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (Princeton 2021; recipient of the 2022 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit), and Cicero: Laelius de amicitia (with James Zetzel, 2024). Her many articles range in topics from Homeric formula and Aratean letter play to Ciceronian philosophy, Ovidian time, Senecan dramaturgy, and beyond. Her most recent publication is How to Find Happiness, a bilingual edition of Cicero’s De finibus in Princeton University Press’s Ancient Guides series (2026).
Selected Publications
How to Find Happiness: An Ancient Guide to the Good Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2026.
Cicero: Laelius de amicitia (with James E. G. Zetzel). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Nigidius Figulus: Roman Polymath. Leiden: Brill, 2024
Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher (with Gareth D. Williams). New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.
The Roman Republic of Letter: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
Roman Reflections: Studies in Latin Philosophy (with Gareth D. Williams). New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Ovid: Dichter des Exils. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft and Philipp von Zabern, 2012.
Forgotten Stars: Rediscovering Manilius' Astronomica (with Steven J. Green). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Ovid. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Manilius and his Intellectual Background. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Callida Musa: Papers on Latin Literature in Honor of R. Elaine Fantham (= Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 61) (with Rolando Ferri and J. Mira Seo). Pisa: Serra, 2009.
Aetna, ed. by R. Ellis (reprint). Exeter: Bristol Phoenix Press, 2008.
Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Vergil's Eclogues. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Vergil's Georgics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Seeing Seneca Whole: Perspectives on Philosophy, Poetry, and Politics (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 28) (with Gareth D. Williams). Leiden: Brill, 2006.
The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
