Emily Greenwood facts for kids
Emily Greenwood is a professor at Harvard University. She teaches about ancient Greek and Roman studies (called Classics) and also about literature from different cultures (called Comparative Literature). Before Harvard, she taught at Princeton University and Yale University. Her work focuses on how history was written in ancient Greece, especially by famous historians like Thucydides and Herodotus. She also studies how people of Black heritage, from different parts of the world, have understood and used ideas from ancient Greece and Rome.
Early Life and Education
Emily Greenwood was born in the Cayman Islands. Her background is half-British and half-Ugandan.
She earned a special scholarship, called a merit scholarship, to attend Sevenoaks School, a boarding school. This scholarship was given because of her excellent academic achievements. She then went to the University of Cambridge in England, where she earned three degrees in Classics: her first degree (BA), a master's degree (MPhil), and her highest degree (PhD). Her PhD research, finished in 2001, explored how the idea of a "critic" (someone who analyzes and judges things) developed from ancient writers like Herodotus to Aristotle.
Career Highlights
After finishing her PhD, Professor Greenwood worked as a junior research fellow at St Catharine's College, Cambridge from 2000 to 2002. This was a special position for new researchers. She then taught Greek at the University of St Andrews in Scotland from 2002 to 2008. In 2009, she joined the Classics Department at Yale University. By October 2020, she became a full professor there.
In 2011, she received the Runciman Award for her book Afro-Greeks: Dialogues Between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the 20th Century. This award celebrates books about Greece. Her book looked at how writers from the Caribbean used ideas from ancient Greece and Rome in their stories.
Professor Greenwood has given many important talks. In 2017, she gave the main speech at Yale College, titled "The University we Build." In 2018, she spoke about how ancient texts are studied in Black experimental writing. In 2019, she gave a lecture at the University of Texas at Austin about how studying old texts can help correct past mistakes and promote fairness. She also helps edit a series of books for Cambridge University Press called 'Classics after Antiquity', which explores how ancient studies are understood today.
In 2022, Professor Greenwood moved to Harvard University. She now holds a special position that combines teaching in Comparative Literature and Classics. In 2023, she was honored by Downing College, Cambridge, being elected as an Honorary Fellow.
