Mark F. McClay
- Kendall 221
- [email protected]
- (517) 607-2709
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“The nature of classical scholarship ... is defined by its subject matter: Graeco-Roman civilisation in its essence and in every facet of its existence. This civilisation is a unity, though we are unable to state precisely when it began and ended; and the task of scholarship is to bring that dead world to life … to recreate the poet’s song, the thought of the philosopher and the lawgiver, the sanctity of the temple and the feelings of believers and unbelievers, the bustling life of market and port, the physical appearance of land and sea, mankind at work and play. In this as in every department of knowledge — or to put it in the Greek way, in all philosophy — a feeling of wonder in the presence of something we do not understand is the starting-point, the goal was pure, beatific contemplation of something we have come to understand in all its truth and beauty. Because the life we strive to fathom is a single whole, our science too is a single whole…”— U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Geschichte der Philologie (1921)
Faculty Information
Additional Faculty Information for Mark F. McClay
Research Areas
Greek poetry and religion; Homer; mystery cult, initiation; anthropology, ritual, performance theory; aesthetics; intellectual history
Education
Ph.D. in Classics, University of California, Berkeley, 2018
M.A. in Classics, University of California, Berkeley, 2013
Post-Baccalaureate in Classical Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2009-10
B.A. in Liberal Arts, St. John’s College, Annapolis, 2009
Previous Teaching Positions
University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL), Dept. of Classics, Visiting Assistant Professor, 2019-21
Professional Memberships
American School of Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA; Summer Session 2015)
Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS)
Society of Ancient Mediterranean Religions (SAMR)
Society for Classical Studies (SCS; formerly the American Philological Association)
Recent Courses
Greco-Roman Literature and Culture
Greek Mythology
Plato’s Phaedrus
Special Topic: Poetry of Sappho
Introduction to Homeric Greek
Euripides’ Medea
Greek Seminar: Lyric Poetry
Latin Seminar: Vergil and the Pastoral
Latin Seminar: Apuleius’s Metamorphoses
Classics Capstone: The Future of the “Classical”
Lectures and Talks
“Art as a Sign of Religion: Aesthetic Complications in Pliny the Elder and Clement of Alexandria.” Conference: “Graphic Signs of Religion, Identity, and Authority in Antiquity.” Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA; 4 Apr 2025)
“Hera: Wife, Sister, and … Rebel?” Univ. of Notre Dame (South Bend, IN; 24 Feb 2025)
“Most Terrible and Most Gentle: Disguised Gods in the Tragic Theater.” SCS/AIA, SAMR Panel: “The Gods Are Watching: The Ocular and the Oracular in Ancient Mediterranean Religions.” (Philadelphia, PA; 3 Jan 2025)
“Persephone’s Visitors: Hiketeia of Bodies and Souls.” Eighth Fonte Aretusa Interdisciplinary Symposium: “Soma Kai Psyche – Mind and Body.” (Siracusa, Sicily; 2 June 2023)
“Choose Your Relatives: Human-Divine Kinship in Orphic Tradition.” Conference: “Orphic Writings, Ideas and Rituals: New Perspectives in Old Questions.” Univ. of Ioannina, Greece (remote; 3 Apr 2021)
“‘Lovely Ephesian Letters’: Late Classical Amulets and the Aesthetics of Little Things.” SCS/AIA; SAMR Panel: “The Religion of Little Things: Small Finds and Big Ideas” (remote; 7 Jan 2021)
“The Dirt on Hector: Homicide Pollution in the Iliad.” CAMWS (remote; 26 May 2020)
“Who is Mnêmosynê in the Orphic Lamellae?” Crete/Patras Ancient Emotions Conference III: “Memory and Emotions in Antiquity.” (Rethymno, Greece; 8 Dec 2019)
“Orphic ‘Bookishness’ and Material Religion in Classical Greece.” SBL/AAR, SAMR Panel: “Ritual Matters: Materiality in Ancient Religion.” (Denver, CO; 19 Nov 2018)
“Performing Immortality: Epigram and the Orphic Lamellae.” SCS/AIA (Toronto, Canada; 8 Jan 2017)
“The Music of Orphic Poetry?” Conference: “Poetic Philosophers and Philosophical Poets: The Relationship between Philosophy and Poetry in the Ancient World,” Univ. of Notre Dame (South Bend, IN; 8 Oct 2016)
“A Herodotus Papyrus (ii.132-134).” Berkeley-Oxford Papyrology Conference, Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA; 16 Sept 2014)
Books
The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic Tradition: Memory and Performance (Cambridge UP, 2023) [See reviews: Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Kernos]
Articles and Chapters
“Hera’s Hexameters in Aeschylus frr. 168-168b Radt: Rhapsodic Hymn or Ritual Disguise?” Mnemosyne (forthcoming)
“Gold Leaves.” In H. Bowden and A.-I. Rassia, eds., Oxford Handbook of Ancient Mystery Cults. Oxford UP (forthcoming)
“Religious Emotions and Mnemonic Discourses: The Gold Tablets of Memory.” In D. Spatharas and G. Kazantzidis, eds., Memory and Emotions in Antiquity. Trends in Classics Suppl. 158 (2024). De Gruyter: 69-84.
“‘You Fell into Milk’: Symbols and Narratives of Kinship in Bacchic Mysteries.” Classical Antiquity (2023) 42.1: 121-58.
“Becoming κλεινός in Crete and Magna Graecia: Dionysiac Mysteries and Maturation Rituals Revisited.” The Classical Quarterly (2021) 71.1: 108-18.
“Rethinking Orphic ‘Bookishness’: Text and Performance in Classical Mystery Religion.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte (2020) 22: 203-19.
Book Reviews
Review of W. Furley, Myths, Muses and Mortals: The Way of Life in Ancient Greece (Reaktion Books, 2024). Classical Journal Online (CJ-O) 2025.12.1.
Review of E. Gee, Mapping the Afterlife: From Homer to Dante (Oxford UP, 2020). ARYS (2022) 20: 475-80.
Review of W. Wians, ed. Logoi and Muthoi: Further Essays in Greek Philosophy and Literature (SUNY Press, 2019). Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) 2020.09.04.
Review of J. Harrisson, ed., Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World (Routledge, 2018). BMCR 2019.08.36.
Public Scholarship
“The Old Gods Return.” The New Criterion 43.6 (Feb 2025): 24-8. Review of H. Hönes, Tangled Paths: A Life of Aby Warburg (Reaktion Books, 2024).
“A Model Up in Heaven.” The New Criterion (Jan 2024) 42.5: 10-15. Feature article about C. Emlyn-Jones and W. Preddy, ed. and trans., Loeb Classical Library: Plato I (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo), III (Lysis, Symposium, Phaedrus), and V-VI (Republic) (Harvard UP, 2013-22).
“Melodies Unheard.” The New Criterion (Dec 2022) 41.4: 72-5. Review of S. Klavan, Music in Ancient Greece: Melody, Rhythm and Life (Bloomsbury, 2021).
I am a Classical scholar with special interests in ancient Greek religion. My recent research has focused on Dionysiac mystery cults, though I have also explored such sundry topics as coming-of-age rituals, theories of memory, genealogical myth, milk symbolism, and ancient Orpheus impersonators. My first book, The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic Tradition, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. In this study, I argue both that private mystery cults were important contexts for poetic composition and that mysteries were decisively shaped by the traditional ideologies of Greek poetry. In my developing work, I explore religious and ritual elements in epic and tragedy. My second book project, Purity and Danger in the Iliad, uses tools of cultural anthropology to examine conceptions of purity and “dirt” in the Homeric world and their role within the oral tradition of Homer and other early Greek epic.
In the classroom, I teach a range of subject matter connected with Graeco-Roman antiquity, from the Greek and Latin languages to specialized topics such as pastoral poetry, mythology, fragments of Sappho, and concepts of the soul. During off-hours, my interests include classical piano, Buster Keaton comedies, and Mariology (especially in Anglican tradition). A long-suffering Baltimore Orioles fan, I can also be found rooting for the Os from March through September. (In October, too, fatis volentibus.)