Andromache Karanika

Picture of Andromache Karanika
Associate Professor, Classics
School of Humanities
Ph.D., Princeton University, 2002, Classics
M.A., Princeton University
B.A., Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, 1993, Classical Philology
Phone: (949) 824-1077
Email: karanika@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
430 Murray Krieger Hall
Mail Code: 2000
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Early Greek Epic and Lyric – Gender and Performance Genres in Greek Literature - Ancient and Modern Greek Oral Tradition- Reception of early Greek epic in Late Antiquity
Academic Distinctions
• Academic Year 2009-2010: Harvard University- Center for Hellenic Studies Fellowship for project on “Transformations of Genre: Performance at Work, Performances about Work.” (www.chs.harvard.edu)
• June 14- June 29 2008- Fellowship by the Fondation Hardt, Vandoevres (Geneva) Switzerland (www.fondationhard.ch) for project on “Making Oral Tradition: Weaving Children’s Songs.”
• Academic years 2002-2004. Stanford Humanities Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. (Stanford Humanities Fellows Program).
• May 2000: Excellence in Teaching Award, Princeton University Graduate School.
1990-2000
• 1995-2000 Princeton University Graduate School Fellowship (full tuition and stipend).
• 1996-2000: J. F. Costopoulos Foundation Fellowship (Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University).
• Summer 1999: New Tools for Research and Teaching Fellowship, McGraw Center, Princeton University.
• Summer 1999: Association of the Graduate Princeton Alumni Award.
• 1995-1996: Stanley J. Seeger Fellowship (Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University).
• 1994-1995: Fulbright Fellowship for graduate studies in Classics, Washington University in St. Louis.
• 1994-1995 Onassis Fellowship for graduate studies in Classics (declined).
• 1993: Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Award (winner of an essay competition).
• 1989-1993: I.K.Y. Award (National Scholarships Foundation, Greece), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
• 1991: Steven Stevens Award, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
• Fall 1990: European Community Erasmus Fellowship, University of Leeds, U.K.
Appointments
Stanford Univesity. Stanford Humanities Fellow, Lecturer in Classics 2002-2004
Temple University. Visiting Assitant Professor 2004-2005
Temple University. Assistant Professor, Greek Hebrew and Roman Classics Department 2005-2006.
Research Abstract
My main research interest is women’s oral tradition and how it is reflected in ancient Greek literature. Most of my research has focused on ancient Greek poetics, folklore, work songs, lamentation, and the way in which cultural elements are refracted through literary discourse. Such a project naturally involves the perspectives of oral history and anthropology. The fascinating relation between women’s daily work and poetry has been my main focus with a perspective that traces labor experience not through the thinking and ideology of the elite but through the lore, rituals, traditions of the practitioners themselves. Ultimately, my work on ancient literature aims at exactly that: to explain and analyze how oral poetics shape ancient poetry. In such a perspective oral genres can be present where one would least expect it from the conventional generic classification point of view. Lamentation, for example, is an integral part not only of epic and lyric poetry but tragedy and even comedy as I argue. The theme of the interweaving of orality and literacy is also present in my most recent work on the reception of classical literature in Late Antiquity (Greek epic tradition of the 4th and 5th c. AD with articles on Eudocia's centos, the "Homeromanteion" and the "Orphica Argonautica") and the Middle Ages (the tradition of lament for the fall of cities in an article on the Lament for the Fall of Constantinople).
Publications
BOOK:

• Karanika, Andromache. 2014. Voices at Work: Women, Performance and Labor in Ancient Greece. - Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/voices-work

EDITED VOLUME:

Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome: Representations and Reactions, 1st Edition, edited by Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi, London: Routledge (2020). https://www.routledge.com/Emotional-Trauma-in-Greece-and-Rome-Representations-and-Reactions-1st/Karanika-Panoussi/p/book/9780815373476

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

• “Troy as Trauma: Reflections on Intergenerational Transmission and the Locus of Trauma” in Emotional Trauma in Ancient Greece and Rome: Representations and Reactions December 20, 2019, ISBN-13: 978-0815373476.

• “Women’s Tangible Time: Perceptions of Continuity and Rupture in Female Temporality in Greek Literature” Forthcoming in Engendering Time in the Ancient Mediterranean, E. Eidinow and L. Maurizio (eds.), fall 2019, Routledge.

• “Shaping Female Ritual Leadership in Greek Literature” in Blackwell Companion to Leadership in the Greco-Roman World (Wiley-Blackwell), S. Ferrario and N. Sandridge (eds.) forthcoming in 2020.

• “Agonistic Perspectives in the Orphic Argonautica,” in Dicite Pierides: Classical Studies in Honour of Stratis Kyriakidis (edited by A. Michalopoulos, S. Papaioannou, A. Zissos) Cambridge Scholars Press (November 2017) http://www.cambridgescholars.com/dicite-pierides

•. Karanika, A.. "Messengers, Angels and Laments for the Fall of Constantinople." In The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in Literature, Folk-Song and Liturgy. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press, February 2016 (226-251). ISBN: 9781107031968.
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/classical-studies/classical-literature/fall-cities-mediterranean-commemoration-literature-folk-song-and-liturgy?format=HB

•. Karanika, A. Materiality and Ritual Competence: Insights from Women’s Prayer Typology in Homer. Forthcoming in Dillon, M.P.J. & Eidinow, E. & Maurizio, L. (eds) , WOMEN’S RITUAL COMPETENCE IN THE GRECO-ROMAN MEDITERRANEAN, Ashgate (UK), 2016

•“Female Voice, Authorship and Authority in Eudocia’s Homeric centos.” for Fakes, Forgeries & Issues of Authenticity in Classical Literature, ed. Javier Martinez, Leiden: Brill, 2014: 95-107.
http://www.brill.com/products/book/fakes-and-forgers-classical-literature

• “Wedding and Performance in Homer: A View in the “Teichoskopia” in Trends in Classics 2013, vol. 5 (2): 208-233.

• “Playing the Tortoise: Reading Symbols of an Ancient Folk Game” in Helios 39 (2012): 101-120.

• “The End of the Nekyia: Odysseus, Heracles and the Gorgon in the Underworld” Arethusa 44 (2011): 1-28.

• “Inside Orpheus’ Songs: Orpheus as an Argonaut in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 50.3, Autumn 2010: 391-410.

• “Homer the Prophet: Homeric Verses and Divination in the Homeromanteion” in Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion. Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World, vol. 8. Eds. A.P.M.H. Lardinois, J.H. Blok and M.G.M. van der Poel. Leiden: Brill 2011: 255-277.

• “Medicine and Cure in Posidippus' Iamatika.” In: M. Annette Harder, Remco F. Regtuit & Gerry Wakker (eds). Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry. Proceedings of the Eighth Groningen Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry. Hellenistica Groningana 15. Peeters, Leuven: 2009: 41-56.

• “The Female Ritual Cry in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo: From poetics to politics” forthcoming in Apolline Politics and Poetics (edited by L. Athanassaki, R. P. Martin and J. F. Miller). ECCD (European Cultural Center of Delphi) Publications. Athens 2009: 67-77.

• “Greek Comedy's Parody of Lament” in Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond, A. Suter (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2008: 181-199.

• “Folk Songs as Ritual Acts: The Case of Work-Songs” Women’s Rituals in Context, M. Parca and A. Tzanetou (eds), Indiana University Press, Series: Studies in Popular Culture and Folklore, 2007: 199-223.

•“Agonistic Poetics in Virgil’s Third Eclogue” in Re-inscribing Pastoral in the Humanities: Essays on the Uses of a Critical Concept, M. Skoie and S. Velasquez (ed.), Bristol Phoenix Press 2006: 107-114, and 160-162.

• “Ecstasis in Healing; Ancient Greek and Contemporary Southern Italian practices,” in Performing Ecstasies: Music, Dance, and Ritual in the Mediterranean, edited by Luisa Del Giudice and Nancy Van Deusen (series: Claremont Cultural Studies), Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2005:23-36.

• “La poétique des chansons grecques populaires des vendanges” in Le vin et la vigne dans la langue et la littérature néohellénique, Martine Breuillot (ed.), Editions Universitaires de Bourgogne, 2003: 56-67.

• “Memories of Poetic Discourse in Athena’s Cult Practice,” in Athena in the Classical World, Susan Deacy and Alexandra Villing (eds), Leiden-Boston-Koeln (Brill), 2001: 277-291.

TEXTBOOK:
• Greek Today: A Communicative Course in Modern Greek Language and Culture. Co-author with Peter Bien, Dimitri Gondicas et al. University Press of New England, 2004.

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES:
• Entries on “Nonnus,” “Sacrifice,” “Gods and Goddesses,” “Orgiastic Cults,” “Women’s Cults,” “Prevelakis,” “Prodromos,” “Apulia,” “Calabria,” “Italy,” “Ambelakia,” “Pelion,” for the Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition, Graham Speake (ed.), F. Dearborn Publishers, 2001.

REVIEWS:
• Review- of L.A. Swift The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric (Oxford University Press 2009) in American Journal of Philology Volume 132, Number 3 (Whole Number 527), Fall 2011, pp. 503-506.

• Review - of Beryl Rawson Children and Childhood in Roman Italy (Oxford University Press 2003) Journal of Roman Studies (2004: 193-194).
Grants
UC HRI (Humanities Research Institute, Fall 2012, Grant to teach a Humanities and Work Graduate Seminar http://humanitiesandwork.org/Seminars/
Other Experience
Editor
TAPA- Formerly known as Transactions of the American Philological Association
Last updated
01/19/2024