Isabelle Torrance

Professor Torrance specializes in archaic and classical Greek literature and culture, especially Greek tragedy and religion. She is also interested in the reception of classical myth in later literature. In her teaching she aims to combine broad understanding of different literary genres, and what they tell us about Greek culture, with close textual examination and critical analysis, prompting connections to be made between specific topics and universal issues of the human condition (as related to e.g. the horrors of war, the place of religion in society, the recognition of ethnic difference, gender and class inequalities, dysfunctional family relationships, the corrupting nature of absolute power, the psychological impulses that drive humans to commit horrendous crimes). She is author of Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes (London 2007), and Metapoetry in Euripides (Oxford, 2013), and co-author of Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece (Berlin, 2014) and she has published over a dozen articles in edited volumes and in peer-reviewed journals, including the American Journal of Philology, the Cambridge Classical Journal, Classical Quarterly, Helios, Hermathena, and Hermes.  Online publications include a co-authored database of oaths in archaic and classical Greek texts (2007), and an annotated bibliography on Aeschylus for Oxford Bibliographies Online (2010; revised 2012). Professor Torrance regularly writes book reviews and referees academic submissions on Greek literature for scholarly journals, which include Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, the Classical Journal, Classical Quarterly, Classical Review, Classics Ireland, Eos, Helios, Hermathena, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Journal of Hellenic Studies, Mnemosyne, Religion and Literature.

Isabelle Torrance will be joining the Stanford Department of Classics as an Early Career Visiting Fellow in Autumn 2016.