Emily Allen-Hornblower
About
Emily Allen-Hornblower, associate professor of Classics, has also served as the Undergraduate Director of Classics since 2010. She is a recipient of The Rutgers Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Service for her teaching in NJ prisons (2016), and of the Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence honors award for outstanding teaching and scholarly work (2015). Her areas of interest include: storytelling; religion and gender; ancient cultural history; ancient Greek and Roman epic; Greek drama (tragedy and comedy); and social justice. Her book and articles center on ancient (and modern) conceptions and portrayals of the human: the human condition and suffering; interpersonal relations; and factors of connection (and disconnection) between individuals and groups. She loves teaching and advising, and taking her students beyond the classroom (for instance to theater and museum outings), and to bring to light (and to life!) crucial aspects of the material covered in class by way of hands-on contact with material culture and a more experiential approach to studying and learning. She is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, and received her Ph.D in Classics from Harvard University, along with a joint doctoral degree from the Sorbonne in Paris (where she received a BA in both Classics and English). Outside of the classroom, she is usually doing something that involves bicycling, her dog, and cooking — or any combination of the three.
Publications & Speaking Engagements
Publications:
- "Reading the emotions inside and outside: Classical Greek texts in prison and beyond." Allen-Hornblower, E., May 17 2021, Classics and Prison Education in the US. Taylor and Francis Inc., p. 11-21 11 p.
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"Emotion and ethnicity in Herodotus’ Histories." Allen-Hornblower, E., Jan 1 2020, Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus. Taylor and Francis, p. 84-106 23 p.
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"Moral disgust in Sophocles’ Philoctetes."Allen- Hornblower, E., Jan 1 2017, The Ancient Emotion of Disgust. Oxford University Press, p. 69-85 17 p.
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"A Rutgers Professor Teaches Classics and Inspires Convicts: Emily Allen-Hornblower’s teachings on tragic heroes resonate with inmates"
ISGRJ Project: The Hurt of the Past, the Wounds of the Present
Greek Drama, Incarceration, and Humanity’s Dialogue
The Hurt of the Past, the Wounds of the Present is a collaboration between Rutgers associate professor Emily Allen-Hornblower (School of Arts and Science, Classics, Rutgers–New Brunswick) and her partners: mainly, Nafeesah Goldsmith, Edward Kates, and Marquis McCray, survivors of the New Jersey carceral system and passionate criminal and social justice advocates. The project engages the public in community conversations about the power of ancient Greek tragedy to elucidate mass incarceration by focusing on the resonance of ancient plays and their themes for (currently and formerly) incarcerated men and women. Together, this team of collaborators hoists the power of storytelling (ancient and modern) to spark meaningful exchanges about what it means to be human and the dehumanization of prisons, putting the shared humanity of all front and center. Our goal is to create a digital archive of these communal dialogues, including a podcast and documentary film trailer.
Led by Emily Allen-Hornblower, School of Arts and Science, Classics, Rutgers–New Brunswick