College of Liberal Arts

Faculty & Staff

Emily McDermott, PhD

Professor of Classics, Associate Provost and Dean of Faculty Professor

Areas of Expertise

Greek tragedy, Late Republican and Augustan poetry, Classical Reception

Degrees

PhD 1973, Yale University

Professional Publications & Contributions

• Emily A. McDermott, "Furor as Failed Pietas: Roman Poetic Constructions of Madness through the Time of Virgil,” in Helen Perdicoyianni-Paleologou, ed., The Concept of Madness from Homer to Byzantium: History and Aspects, Lexis Supplement V, Hakkert Edition (2016): 191-244
• Emily A. McDermott, “Ovid, Christians, and Celts in the Epilogue of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain,” Mississippi Quarterly, 64.1-2 (2011): 177-195
• Emily A. McDermott, “‘The Metal Face of the Age’: Hesiod, Virgil, and the Iron Age on Cold Mountain,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 17:2 (June, 2010), 244-256
• Emily A. McDermott, “Mr. Chipping and Mr. Hundert: Manliness, Media, and the Classical Education,” Classical and Modern Literature 28:2 (2009), 1-21
• Emily McDermott, “The Despair of his Tutor: Latin as Socioeducational Marker in Les Trois Mousquetaires.” IJCT 15 (2008) 29-52
• Emily McDermott, “Playing for His Side: Kipling’s “Regulus,” Corporal Punishment, and Classical Education.” IJCT 15 (2008) 369-392.

Additional Information

Emily McDermott came to UMass Boston in 1974, with a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in Classics from Yale. In her time at the University, she has taught over thirty-five different undergraduate and graduate courses, including Latin and Greek language and literature classes, classical civilization classes, Core classes, First-Year Seminars, Honors Seminars, and (most recently) online courses. As the first among her colleagues to immerse herself in oral-Latin conventicula, she initiated the department’s present seminal focus on application of second-language acquisition theory to the teaching of Latin. Her publications center on joint specializations in Greek tragedy, with particular focus on Euripides, and Augustan Latin poetry, especially Horace, Virgil, and Catullus. Most recently, she has turned her scholarly attention to Reception Studies, publishing numerous articles on classical education through the centuries and on classical elements in authors as diverse as Alexandre Dumas, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, Louis de Bernières, Ethan Canin, and Charles Frazier. Administratively, she has spent ten of her more than forty years on campus as Chair of the Classics Department; five in the 1980’s as Assistant Chancellor under Robert A. Corrigan; seven first as Associate Dean, then as Interim Dean of Graduate Studies; three as Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. She is presently in her third year as Associate Provost and Dean of the Faculty.

For Professor McDermott's Author Page in ScholarWorks see: http://works.bepress.com/emily_mcdermott