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Welcome to my personal webpage. I am the Associate Dean for Humanities and Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2023-2028) and Professor of Classics. I served as Interim Director of the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics (Fall 2022) and Associate Director (2021-22). I am the former editor of The Classical Journal (2016-2021) and of Illinois Classical Studies(2011-2016). I served as President of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South for 2015-2016. I earned my BA in Greek Philology from the University of Crete at Rethymno, Greece, and my PhD in Classics from Brown University. I had held a Visiting Fellowship at Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford, UK, where I have returned for visiting scholarships at Corpus and Exeter Colleges in subsequent years. In January 2016, I received the Teaching Excellence Award from the Society for Classical Studies. In April 2017, I received an Ovatio from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (audio available here). In August 2019, I was named University Scholar at the University of Illinois. In September 2021, I received the Campus Executive Officer Distinguished Leadership Award.

My research focuses on the cultural poetics and the sociopolitics of Flavian poetry (ca. 80-100 CE), in particular the epic poets Silius Italicus and Statius.  My monograph on the role of women in the Thebaid and the Punica, titled Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic was published by Oxford University Press, UK (2010). My edition and commentary on Book 8 of Statius’ Thebaid was published by Oxford University Press in January 2016. A translation of Silius Italicus’ Punica with Neil Bernstein came out in March 2021. My commentary on Book 3 of Silius Italicus’ Punica (with R. J. Littlewood) was published by Oxford University Press in March 2022. Another commentary on Book 8 of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica (by Cristiano Castelletti, edited with Marco Fucecchi and Gesine Manuwald) was published in September 2022.

I have edited eighteen volumes of essays: Lux: Studies in Greek and Latin Literature in Honor of Lucia Athanassaki (co-edited with Myrto Aloumpi; Walter de Gruyter, October 2024), Classical Enrichment: Greek and Latin Literature and its Reception (Studies in Honour of Stephen Harrison) (co-edited with Stavros Frangoulidis and Thea S. Thorsen; Walter de Gruyter, November 2024), The Poetic World of Statius’ Silvae (by M.C.J. Putnam, edited with C.E. Newlands; Oxford University Press, 2023), Dynamics of Marginality: Liminal Characters and Marginal Groups in Neronian and Flavian Literature (co-edited with Konstantinos Arampapaslis, Stephen Froedge, and Clayton Schroer, Walter de Gruyter, May 2023), Silius Italicus and the Tradition of the Roman Historical Epos (with Marco Fucecchi, Brill, August 2022), Screening Love and War in Troy:Fall of a City (with Monica Cyrino, Bloomsbury, January 2022), Undamning Domitian? Reassessing the Last Flavian princeps (with Claire Stocks and Emma Buckley, ICS 44.2, 2019), Fides in Latin Literature (with Claire Stocks and Emma Buckley, Toronto, 2019), Campania in the Flavian Poetic Imagination (co-edited with R. J. Littlewood, Oxford, 2019), Epic Heroes on Screen (co-edited with Stacie Raucci, Edinburgh, 2018), Libri Carolini (co-edited with Barbara Wallach, ICS 42.2, 2017), Oxford Readings in Flavian Epic (Oxford, 2016), STARZ Spartacus: Reimagining an Icon on Screen (co-edited with Monica Cyrino, Edinburgh 2016; issued in paperback in 2018), Flavian Poetry and its Greek Past (Brill, 2014), Ritual and Religion in Flavian Epic (Oxford University Press, 2013), the Blackwell Companion to Terence (with Ariana Traill, 2013), and the Brill Companion to Silius Italicus (Brill, 2009), Statius’s Silvae and the Poetics of Intimacy (with Carole Newlands, Arethusa 40.2, 2007); my Bryn Mawr commentary on Plautus’ play the Mercator came out in 2009.

I am currently involved in several major projects: a monograph on Death and Ritual in Flavian Epic, a commentary on the Pseudo-Virgilian Ciris, a three-volume edition of Cornelius Schonaeus’ (Terentius Christianus) comedies (with Konstantinos Arampapaslis). I am co-editor of two Oxford Commentary series, the Oxford Commentaries in Flavian Poetry and the Oxford Pseudepigrapha Latina. Future ongoing projects include the Oxford Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in the Greek and Roman Worlds (with Allison Glazebrook), as well as commentaries on Tacitus’ Histories 4, Statius’ Thebaid 6, and Pseudo-Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus.

I have directed dissertations on several topics in Imperial Latin literature. Recent PhDs directed: Stephen Froedge, “Plenus monstris: Monsters and Monstrosity in Flavian Epic” (March 2020, now at Ohio Classical Academy), Adam Kozak, “Nature, Ideology, and Imperialism in Flavian Epic Poetry” (February 2020), Clayton Schroer, “Quid restat profugis? Exile and Power in Silius Italicus’ Punica” (November 2019, now Visiting Assistant Professor at Emory University), Konstantinos Arampapaslis, “Hostes deum: Magic in Neronian Literature” (May 2019, now at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Aine McVey, “Reading Character in Suetonius’ De Vita Caesarum(April 2019, now at AHS, UIUC), Nicholas Dee, “Oaths and Greed in Tacitus’ Histories” (August 2016, now Associate Teaching Professor at Bowling Green State University), Amy Norgard, “The Senses and Synaesthesia in Horace’s Satires” (June 2015, now Associate Professor at Truman State University), Sergio Yona, “The Psychology of Satire: Epicurean Ethics in Horace’s Sermones” (August 2014, now Associate Professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia); MA thesis directed: Emily Marrilier, “Hair in Petronius’ Satyrica” (May 2014); Sebastian Anderson, “Archilochus, Telephus, and the Warrior Ethos” (May 2012), nominee for Best MA thesis Midwest Association of Graduate Schools (Fall 2012).

Email: aaugoust@illinois.edu

Mailing Address:

Department of the Classics

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

FLB 4080, 707 S. Mathews Ave.

Urbana, IL 61801