Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

(If you’d kept your mouth shut, we might have thought you were clever.) 

—Boethius (paraphrased)


I teach Classics (Greek and Latin) at Washington and Lee University, nestled in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley (map). Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, I went to college at Vanderbilt University, graduating with a B.A. in Classical Languages in 1999. I went on to do my graduate work at Oxford, also in Classics, with a specialization in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. After completing a M.Phil. and D.Phil. at Oxford, my family and I moved to Cambridge, Mass. where I worked at the Harvard Society of Fellows for two years (2004–2006) and in the Department of the Classics for one (2006–2007). I am currently on leave from the Department of Classics at Washington and Lee, spending the 2009–10 academic year as a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC.

My published research mainly concerns literary history in Late Antiquity: particularly, literature written in Greek, Syriac, and Latin during the period 200–800 AD. If interested in specifics, have a look at my CV for previous publications and current research projects. My “meta” interests are in the organization of knowledge through literature, mainly among early Christian writers. I am also interested in how the category of literature has been defined throughout history and, consequently, in the (now somewhat lost) practice of comparative literary history. I am not a theorist per se, nor an active proponent of any single critical method, but I enjoy thinking about the interaction of form, content, and audience in literature, including such issues as fictionality, implied/ideal readers, the content of literary form, reception history, hermeneutics, and religion and literature. If I have any scholarly allegiances, I would say I find myself attracted to the “sociology of knowledge” of Edward Shils, such as in his excellent book Tradition, and to the theories of linguistic diachrony/synchrony, as elaborated by Russian Formalists such as Roman Jakobson, as well as the theory of “literary evolution” in the work of other members of the Prague Linguistic Circle (Jan Mukařovský, René Wellek, et al.).

On the technical side, I find it interesting that pretty much all of my academic work, teaching and research alike, revolves (in some fashion) around the web and internet communication. Even Classics, such a stick-in-the-mud discipline in many ways, is digitizing itself: sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse (perhaps). The academy communicates via the internet. I think that’s an important and salutary development. Not that things aren’t lost in the process, but hopefully they aren’t lost permanently, and other things are possible that weren’t before.

The modest blog on this site is somewhat more diffuse in content than I had originally intended. Subject-wise, I was at first trying to limit its focus to the digitization of texts and academia, but I rarely posted on those topics at length. While posts in that vein will no doubt continue to appear, I have conceded (to myself) that it was counterproductive to be updating Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. without making use of this site, which is where all my other stuff is. Having quit “social networks” (like a bad habit), I’m now trying to stick to one blog, which makes the posts less focused in terms of content but at least keeps everything in one place. Linked above on the right are my Zotero library and Google Buzz feeds. The former is a rather unwieldy list of academic books and articles I save to Zotero as I’m working on research projects. My Google Buzz feed is mainly just sites and articles I’ve shared through Google Reader.

Finally, I’ve listed some sites I read regularly — dealing with academia, design, technology, etc. — on the Links page. For tech-savvy folks who want to know what I’ve spent too much money on, see the Colophon. Feel free to contact me (email) if anything here sparks your interest.

Scott Johnson