Katharina Volk
Professor of Classics
(212) 854-5683
kv2018@columbia.edu
614 Hamilton Hall
Currently on Leave
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), and Ovid (Malden, MA 2010). Her many articles range in topics from Homeric formula and Aratean letter play to Ciceronian philosophy, Ovidian time, Senecan dramaturgy, and beyond. Her latest book, The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (Princeton 2021), explores the politics and sociology of knowledge in late Republican Rome, focusing on the intellectual activities of such learned senators as Cicero, Caesar, Varro, Nigidius Figulus, Cato, Brutus, and Cassius. The book was awarded the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit in 2022 by the Society for Classical Studies.
Professor Volk’s current project is a commentary on Cicero’s De amicitia for the Cambridge “green and yellow” series, which she is writing jointly with James Zetzel.
Selected Publications
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.
