Jessica Blum-Sorensen
Education:
Ph.D. - Classical Philology Yale University
Brief Biography:
Jessica Blum-Sorensen is Assistant Professor of Classics. She earned a PhD from Yale University in 2015, an MA and MPhil in classical philology from Yale in 2012, and a BA in classics from Trinity College Dublin in 2005. Before joining the Department of History and Classics in 2023, she was assistant professor and program director of Classical Studies at the University of San Francisco, a visiting assistant professor at Wabash College and a visiting lecturer at UC Irvine.
She specializes in imperial Latin poetry and the epic tradition, and is co-editor of The Epic Journey in Greek and Roman Literature, published in 2019 with Cambridge University Press. Her monograph, Epic Ambition: Hercules and the Politics of Emulation in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, examines the intersection of Roman social discourses and the epic tradition in the tumultuous political world of Flavian Rome.
Area(s) of Expertise:
Latin poetry of the early empire and the epic tradition
Selected Publications:
Blum-Sorensen, J. (2024) In Attila Ferenczi, Andrew Zissos, and Dániel Kozák (Ed.), Juno Audax: Rethinking Genre in the Argonautica.
Blum-Sorensen, J. (2024) The Future is Female: Circe, Augustus, and the Prehistory of Rome. Classical World.(114),
Blum-Sorensen, J. (2023) Epic Ambition: Hercules and the Politics of Emulation in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica. University of Wisconsin Press
Blum-Sorensen, J. (2023) In Alison Keith and Micah Myers (Ed.), “Through the Looking Glass: epic exempla and elegiac mirrors in the Argonautica,” .
Blum-Sorensen, J. , . (2019) In Thomas Biggs and Jessica Blum (Ed.), . Cambridge University Press
Blum-Sorensen, J. (2017) Rogue Bulls and Troubled Heroes: heroic value in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica. Classical Outlook.(92), 44-53.
Blum-Sorensen, J. (2017) Witch’s Song: morality, name-calling and poetic authority in the Argonautica. Classical Journal.(113), 173-200.
