Marcus Folch
Associate Professor of Classics
mf2664@columbia.edu
617C Hamilton Hall
On Leave 2024-2025
Research Interests
Greek Literature, Ancient Philosophy, Rhetoric
Ancient Theories and Practices of Performance
Genre
Gender
Punishment and Incarceration in Antiquity
Marcus Folch joined the Columbia Classics Department in 2009, after receiving his B.A. in Classics from Cornell University in 2000 and his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University in 2006. From 2007-2009 he was Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Richmond; from 2006-2007 he was Visiting Lecturer in Classical Studies also at the University of Richmond.
He is the author of The City and the Stage: Performance, Genre, and Gender in Plato's Laws (Oxford University Press), and his interests include ancient Greek literature, philosophy, rhetoric, performance studies, gender theory, and the history of punishment and incarceration. His second book project, provisionally entitled Bondage, Incarceration, and the Prison in Ancient Greece and Rome: A Cultural and Literary History, offers (as the title suggests) a history of incarceration and the prison in the ancient world.
Selected Publications
The City and the Stage: Performance, Genre, and Gender in Plato’s Laws. (Oxford University Press).
“Engendering Harmony: Performance and the Status of Women in Plato’s Laws,” Classical Antiquity (forthcoming 2016)
“Who Calls the Tune: Literary Criticism, Theatrocracy, and the Performance of Philosophy in Plato’s Laws,” American Journal of Philology, 134.4: 557-601, Winter 2013.
“The Unideal Genres and the Ideal City: Comedy, Threnody, and the Making of Citizens in Plato’s Laws,” in A.-E. Peponi (ed.), Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws. Cambridge University Press, 339-367, 2013.
Review of G. R. Boys-Stones and J. H. Haubold (ed.), Plato and Hesiod. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 02.18.2011.
Review of D.S. Allen, Why Plato Wrote. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 134: 264 – 265, 2012.
