I work on the late republic, especially Sallust, who appeals to me because he watched his world fall apart and because he is fascinated by troublemakers – even if not always sympathetic to them. My own particular focus is Sallust’s ‘Historiae’ and Sallust’s representation of Roman rhetoric. I have also been working recently in classical reception, where my research is focused on the American poet E. E. Cummings. I like the way that Cummings responds to Classical verse: ambitious, provocative, and disobedient. My recent book, ‘E. E. Cummings’ Modernism and the Classics: Each Imperishable Stanza’ (Oxford, 2016), won a 2018 First Book Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS).
I hold BA, MSt and DPhil degrees from the University of Oxford.
More information on my research can be found at https://www.alisonrosenblitt.com
Photo by Ruth Crafer, 2019
My role in College
I am Director of Studies in Classics and Ancient History, working closely with the Director of Studies in History in making provision for Ancient and Modern History, as well as tutor for a range of papers on the undergraduate syllabuses.
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Selected Publications
Books
- The Beauty of Living: E. E. Cummings in the Great War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2020)
- Rome after Sulla (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
- E. E. Cummings’ Modernism and the Classics: Each Imperishable Stanza (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)
Articles and Research Papers
- ‘Sulla’s long shadow… Sallust in Tacitus and Tacitus in Sallust’, in A. Eckert and A. Thein, eds, Sulla Felix: Politics, Public Image, and Reception (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019)
- ‘Afterword: Modernism Going Forward’, in M. Hickman and L. Kozak, eds, The Classics in Modernist Translation (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).
- ‘Hostile Politics: Sallust and the rhetoric of popular champions in the late republic’, American Journal of Philology 137 (2016), pp. 655-88
- ‘The Turning Tide: the politics of the year 79 b.c.e.', Transactions of the American Philological Association 144 (2014), pp. 415-44
- '"a twilight smelling of Vergil”: E.E. Cummings, Classics, and the Great War’, Greece & Rome 61 (2014), pp. 242-60
- ‘Pretentious Scansion, Fascist Aesthetics, and a Father-complex for Joyce: E. E. Cummings on Sapphics and Ezra Pound', Cambridge Classical Journal 59 (2013), pp. 178-98
- ‘Sallust’s Historiae and the voice of Sallust’s Lepidus’, Arethusa 46 (2013), pp. 447-70
- 'Rome and North Korea: Totalitarian Questions', Greece & Rome 59 (2012), pp. 202-13
- 'The “devotio” of Sallust’s Cotta', American Journal of Philology 132 (2011), pp. 397-427