Judith P. Hallett

Judith P. Hallett is a Professor and the Graduate Director at the Department of Classics in the University of Maryland. She specializes in Latin, both the language and the literature. She has also researched and written about women, the family, and sexuality in the Ancient Greek and Roman society. She is involved in the research on classical education and reception in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in the English speaking world.

Judith P. Hallett got her BA at Wellesley College, and later got her MA and PhD in the field of Classical Philology at Harvard University.

She is the author of several books and essays, as well as editor of a couple of essay collections. Among some of her work one can find Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton,1984). As for her work as an editor, she has participated in the release of "Six North American Women Classicists" a special edition of the journal Classical Word (1996-1997). Along side Marilyn B. Skinner edited Roman Sexualities (Princeton, 1997). As well as Rome and Her Monuments: Essays on the City and Literature of Rome in Honor of Katherine A. Geffcken with Sheila K. Dickison; Women Writing Latin (Routledge, 2002); "Roman Mothers" for the journal Helios(2006); and British Classics Outside England: The Academy and Beyond with Christopher Stray (Baylor, 2008). She also contributed to the Blackwell Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) along with fellow colleague at the University of Maryland Dr. Eva Stehle. She is the co-author of the essay "Roman Elegy and the Roman Novel" with Judith Hindermann for A Companion to the Ancient Novel (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). She contributed with the work "Omnia Movet Amor: Love and Resistance, Art and Movement in Ovid's Daphne and Apollo Episode (Metamorphoses 1.452-567)" to Kinesis: The Ancient Depiction of Gesture, Motion, and Emotion (Michigan University Press, 2015). She is the co-author of "Raising the Iron Curtain, Crossing the Pond: Transformative Interactions Among North American and Eastern European Classicists since 1945" with Professor Dorota Dutsch for Classics and Class: Greek and Latin Classics and Communism at School (2016). Her more resent work, is the publication of two essays: "Greek (and Roman) Ways and Thoroughfares: the Routing of Edith Hamilton's Classical Antiquity" and "Eli's Daughters: Female Classics Graduate Students at Yale, 1892-1941". Both in Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romily (Oxford University Press, 2016).

She has been active in the academic world as well as the publishing world. At her time in Harvard, she studied at the American Academy in Rome. Later on she spent a year at the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London.She was elected to the American Philological Association Board of Directors for the period between 1997 and 1999; appointed the Vice-President of that Association's Division of Outreach in 1999. She was president of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States in the year 2000. From that year until 2009, she coordinated the CAAS meetings. Also elected to the APA Vice-President for Outreach for the period 2008-2011. She was a member of the Maryland Humanities Council from 2001 until 2011. From 2002 until 2009 she was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Baltimore Hebrew University, and in 2010 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Thornton Wilder Society. She was also elected president for the year 2013 until the year 2015 of the Gamma of Maryland Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

She has been honored by the publishing of a festschrift (a celebratory collection of articles) for her contributions to the study of Roman literature and culture. The title of the festschrift is Roman Literature, Gender and Reception: Domina Illustris (Routledge, 2013). She also received the Lambda Classical Caucus (LCC) Activism Award for the year 2015. This award is given to members, who have promoted the rights and well-being of sexual minorities beyond the usual academic activities. Recently, she has been awarded the Suzanne Deal Booth Scholar-in-Residence at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome for the period of 2017-2018.

Outside the publication and academic world, she has participated in several TV shows as an expert guest. From 1986 until 1994 in the Canadian radio show "The Court of Ideas". She was interviewed by Sander Vanocur for the History Channel/A&E series “Movies in Time”. For the same channels, she was part of a segment for the Valentine's Special on the five greatest love affairs of history and their series on "The History of Sex" (1999). In 2001, she was a consultant for the PBS series "The Roman Empire in the First Century", making an appearance on every episode aired.