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Department ofClassics

John Heath

...

John Heath

Professor

Curriculum Vitae (CV)


John Heath received his BA from Pomona College, his MA and PhD from Stanford University. In 1989 he was given an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award. He has been awarded The Phi Beta Kappa Society (northern California) teaching award for excellence in undergraduate education, an Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves Award for his contributions to undergraduate teaching in the humanities, and the Brutocao Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2006-7 he was given the Professor Joseph Bayma, S.J., Scholarship Award from the College of Arts and Sciences. He teaches all levels of Greek and Latin, as well as courses on classical literature in translation, Greek mythology, and Greek and Roman culture. He has published thirty articles on Latin and Greek literature. He is also the author of Actaeon, the Unmannerly Intruder (Peter Lang 1992), a case study in Greek and Latin myth making. With Victor Davis Hanson he wrote the notorious Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (Free Press 1998), as well as Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing Classics from an Impoverished Age (ICS 2001, co-authored with Bruce Thornton as well). In 2005 Cambridge University Press published The Talking Greeks: Speech, Animals, and the Other in Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato (paperback 2009). His latest book, Yahweh or Zeus? Why We Would Be Better Off with Homer’s Gods, will be published by Routledge in 2019. Professor Heath lives in Santa Cruz with his wife Lisa and younger daughter Alexis.