Quick Facts
Biography
Sarah Iles Johnston (born 25 October 1957) is an American academic working at Ohio State University. She is primarily known for her contribution to Classics, and in particular her research into Ancient Greek divination and ritual texts, and their role within Ancient Greek religion.
Education
Johnston attended the University of Kansas where she received her B.S. in Journalism in 1979, followed shortly by her B.A. in Classics in 1980. She then attended Cornell University, where she also worked as a teaching assistant, to complete her M.A. in Classics in 1983, and her PhD in 1987.
Career
Johnston began her teaching career proper when she accepted the post of Lecturer in Classics at Princeton University, where she worked from 1987-88. From there, she has held a number of positions within Ohio State University, including Assistant Professor of Classics (1988-95), Associate Professor of Latin and Greek (1995-2000) and Professor of Greek and Latin (2000-).
She also held the position of Founding Director, Center For the Study of Religion (2006-10) and was appointed as Arts and Humanities, Distinguished Professor of Religion in 2011.
Her work primarily concerns Ancient Greek religion, with an emphasis on divination and the boundaries between life and death, as shown by two of her most well-known works Ancient Greek Divination (2008) and Ritual Texts For the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (2007, with Fritz Graf), the latter of which discusses Ancient Greek beliefs on the concept of the soul, and life after death. Additionally, she has also been an editor for a number of collections including Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (2004) and Ancient Religions (2007), and has authored a number of articles and essays for Classical journals.
Publications
Books
- The Story of Myth (Harvard Univ. Press: forthcoming 2018).
- Ancient Greek Divination (Wiley-Blackwell: 2008).
- With Fritz Graf, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (Routledge: 2007; second edition 2013).
- Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (University of California Press: 1999).
- Hekate Soteira (Amer. Class. Studies #21) (Scholars' Press: 1990; now published by Oxford University Press).
Edited volumes
- Narrating Religion (forthcoming from MacMillan).
- Ancient Religions (Harvard University Press: 2007).
- Co-Editor (with Peter T. Struck) Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. Religions in the Greco-Roman World. vol. 155 (Brill: 2005).
- Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Harvard University Press: 2004).
- Co-Editor (with James J. Clauss) Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art (Princeton University Press: 1997).