Barbara F. McManus

Barbara McManus was a professor of classics at The College of New Rochelle and an expert in classics and comparative literature, feminism, mythology, and women in antiquity. She was acknowledged both for her research and for innovative teaching approaches, and had a significant influence on both the teaching and research of women in antiquity, and women as classicists.

Career

Barbara McManus gained her BA from the College of New Rochelle in 1964. She moved to Harvard for her MA in 1965, and PhD in Comparative Literature, which she gained in 1976, writing a thesis on "Inreparabile tempus: A Study of Time in Virgil's Aeneid".

In 1967 she became an instructor in classics at The College of New Rochelle, where she stayed until her retirement in 2000, by which point she had become a professor. In 1997 she gave the lecture "Crossing The Boundaries Of Gender: Vergil's Aeneid and Augustan Rome," at Hamilton College, funded by the Winslow Lecture Fund. Between 1997 and 2000 she was part of the team who developed the innovative 'VRoma Project', providing Latin resources and an 'interactive virtual Roman world', which was funded by a 'Teaching with Technology' Grant from the NEH, and later became the director of the project until 2015. She also contributed significantly to understanding on female pioneers in Classics, through her research on the life and history of Grace Macurdy, including reenactments of scenes from her life.

Along with this grant, McManus received NEH grants in 1983, 1989, and 2006. In 2003-2004 she launched the first census of classics for the APA. She also served as president of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (CAAS) in 2005, and their webmaster between 2005 and 2010. She was also recognised with awards from The College of New Rochelle, including their Alumnae Association's Ursula Laurus award in 1994 and in 2014 their "Woman of Achievement" award. In 2012, the University of Maryland hosted an international, interdisciplinary conference in her honour.

Selected works Half Human Kind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England 1540-1640 with Katherine Usher Henderson (Urbana: U. of Illinois Press, 1985) “Multicentering: The Case of the Athenian Bride,” Helios 17,2 (Autumn 1990) 225–35 Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics (New York: Twayne; London: Prentice Hall, 1997) “The VRoma Project: Community and Context for Latin Teaching and Learning,” CALICO Journal 18,2 (2001) 249–68 The Drunken Duchess of Vassar: Grace Harriett Macurdy, Pioneering Feminist Scholar (Columbus: Ohio State U. Press, 2017).