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Department of Classics

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Welcome! » Maura Lafferty


Maura Lafferty

Academic History

  • Ph.D. (Medieval Studies), University of Toronto, 1993
  • M.A. (Classics), University of North Carolina, 1987
  • B.A. (Latin), Wellesley College, 1983 

Special Interests:

  • Medieval Latin Language and Literature
  • Latin Paleography and Manuscript Culture

Academic Employment:

  • Associate Professor of Classics, Department of Classics, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, 2008-
  • Assistant Professor of Classics, Department of Classics, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, 2006-08
  • Associate Professor of Latin, Department of Classics, University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill, 2006-07 (on leave)
  • Assistant Professor of Latin, Department of Classics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000-06
  • Arthur J. Ennis Post-doctoral Teaching Fellow in the Humanities, Villanova University, 1998-2000
  • Visiting Assistant Professor, Bowdoin College, 1997-98
  • Assistant Professor, Duke University/Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies, Rome, 1996-97
  • Instructor, Department of Classics, University of Toronto, 1995
  • Instructor (Full-time), McMaster University, 1994-95
  • Visiting Assistant Professor, Dalhousie University, 1993-94
  • Visiting Assistant Professor, Columbia University, 1992-93

Grants:

  • National Endowment for the Humanities/Jesse Benedict Carter Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow, American Academy in Rome, 2004-2005
  • Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin, 2004-2005 (declined)
  • Faculty Fellow, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, UNC, Fall 2004 (declined)
  • Kenan Fund ($1,720), 2004
  • University Research Council Award ($2,000), 2003-2004
  • Fellow, National Humanities Center, 2001-2002

Work in Progress:

  • Empress of Languages: Latinitas in the Early Middle Ages, a book-length study of attitudes towards Latin in Western Europe in the Middle Ages.
  • The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, edition, translation and commentary, next large project.

Publications:

  • Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis: Epic and the Problem of Historical Understanding. Turnhout:  Brepols, 1998.
  • “Non scholastico modo: Education and Irish Identity in the Dublin Collection of Irish Saints’ Lives,” under consideration by Sacris Erudiri.
  •  “The Alexandreis of Gautier de Châtillon,” A Companion to Alexander in the Middle Ages, ed. Z. David Zuwiyya (Brill, forthcoming, 2008).
  • “Medieval Latin Textbooks,” Illinois Classical Studies 31 (2006), forthcoming.
  • “Educating a Virgin: A Proposed Emendation of Conchubranus, Vita S. Monennae 1.3,” Journal of Medieval Latin 15 (2005), pp. 237-45.
  • “Augustine, the Aeneid, and the Roman Family,” Hoping for Continuity: Childhood, Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. K. Mustakallio, J. Hanska, H.-L. Sainio, and V. Vuolanto, Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae, 33 (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2005), pp. 105-118.
  • “Translating Faith from Greek to Latin: Romanitas and Christianitas in Late Fourth-Century Rome and Milan,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003), pp. 21-62.
  • “Limping Jacob:  The Image of the Jew in Walter of Châtillon’s Lyrics,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 33 (1998), pp. 133-47.
  • “Nature and an Unnatural Man: Lucan’s Influence on Walter of Châtillon’s Concept of Nature,” Classica et Mediaevalia 46 (1995), pp. 285-300.
  • “Mapping Human Limitations: The Tomb Ecphrases in Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis,” Journal of Medieval Latin 4 (1994), pp. 64-81.

Recent Papers and Presentations:

  • “Telling Our Students the Truth about Latin Word Order,” Tennessee Foreign Language Teaching Association, November 8, 2008.
  • “Teaching Hyperbaton, or How to Recognize What Hyperbaton is Not,” Classical Association of the Middle West and South, April 18, 2008.
  • “Saint Patrick: Unlearned Sinner to Learned Scribe,” Fortieth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, October 31, 2008.
  • “Manuscripts as Guides to Better Reading,” Wednesday Lunches, Humanities Initiative, University of Tennessee, February 20, 2008.
  • “The Trickster Bishop and St Andrew's Beard: Relics and Politics in Sixth-Century Ravenna,” Saints and Citizens: Religion and Politics in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Marco Annual Symposium, November 15-16, 2007.
  • “Goths and the Fall of Rome,” Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning, November, 2007.
  • “Oral Reception of the Voyage of Brendan,” Forty-Second International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 10-13, 2007.
  • “Agnellus and the ‘Epigraphic Habit’ of Early Medieval Ravenna,” University of Indiana, March 22, 2007.
  • “Latin Culture in Practice in the Columba’s Life of Adomnán and the Voyage of Brendan,” University of Notre Dame, September 29, 2006.
  • “Love’em or Lime’em: The Passion of St. Cecilia and One Christian Response to the Material Remains of Pagan Rome,” Texts and Contexts: A Conference at the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies, the Ohio State University, September 30-October 1, 2005.
  • “Making Books and Building Libraries in the Middle Ages,” UNC Program in the Humanities, December 2-3, 2005.
  • “In Praise of Learned Women? The Education of Irish Women in Conchubranus' Life of Monennaand in the Dublin Collection of Saints' Lives,” International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 13, 2005.
  • “Scribes and the Book of Armagh,” AAR Summer Program in Applied Palaeography, June 13, 2005.
  • “The Reading Audience in Early Medieval Rome: Latins, Goths and Greeks,” American Academy in Rome, June 22, 2005.

Contact Information

Maura Lafferty
Department of Classics 
1104 McClung Tower 
The University of Tennessee 
Knoxville, TN 37996-0413

Phone: (865) 974-7178 
Fax: (865) 974-7173
mlaffert@utk.edu