Deborah Beck

Deborah Beck (PhD Harvard University, 1997) is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she has taught since 2009. She has been Plumer Visiting Research Fellow at St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, Homeric Studies Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, and has won two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has also worked at Rice University, Colgate University, the Pennsylvania State University, and Swarthmore College.

Her research interests in classical epic include formulas and oral aesthetics in Homeric epic, speech and speech representation, epic similes, and cognitive theories of reading and interpretation.

She is the author of two books on Homeric poetry: Homeric Conversation (Harvard University Press, 2005) and Speech Presentation in Homeric Epic (University of Texas Press, 2012) with companion database (http://www.laits.utexas.edu/DeborahBeck/home). Recent articles include "Emotional and Thematic Meanings in a Repeating Homeric Motif: A Case Study" (forthcoming in Journal of Hellenic Studies), "Music, Craft, and Technology in the Similes in Vergil’s Aeneid" (forthcoming in Greek and Roman Musical Studies), and "Expressive Narration in Apollonius’ Argonautica", Syllecta Classica 25 (2014). She is now at work on a book about epic similes in Iliad, the Odyssey, the Argonautica, the Aeneid, and the Metamorphoses.