Sheila Murnaghan

Sheila Murnaghan is the Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek at the University of Pennsylvania. She is particularly known for her work on Greek epic, tragedy, and historiography.

Career Murnaghan gained her AB in Classics from Harvard University in 1973 followed by a BA from Cambridge University in 1975 and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980. Murnaghan taught at Yale University from 1979 until 1990 then moved to the University of Pennsylvania where she is now the Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek.

Murnaghan works on Greek epic poetry, tragedy, and historiography, gender in classical culture, and the classical tradition. Her groundbreaking work Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (Princeton 1987), which was based on her PhD thesis, was republished in 2011.

Murnaghan currently works on the classical tradition, particularly the development of Greek mythology as children's literature in the 19th-20th centuries. She was invited to give a lecture on the subject as part of the Heinz Blum Memorial Lecture Series at Boston College in 2016 and her volume on the subject with Deborah H. Roberts was published in 2018.

Select publications Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (Princeton 1987, 2nd edition 2011)

Co-authored works with Sandra R. Joshel Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations (Routledge 1998) with Deborah H. Roberts "Penelope's Song: The Lyric Odysseys of Linda Pastan and Louise Glück," Classical and Modern Literature 22 (2002): 1-33 with Hunter Gardner Odyssean Identities In Modern Cultures: The Journey Home (Ohio State University Press 2014) with Deborah H. Roberts Childhood and the Classics: Britain and America, 1850-1965 (Oxford University Press 2018) with Ralph M. Rosen Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition (Ohio State University Press 2018)