Caroline Stark

Caroline Stark is Associate Professor of Classics at Howard University in the Department of Classics, College of Arts & Sciences. She also serves as Director of Interdisciplinary Humanities in the Ancient and Modern Interdisciplinary Studies program. Her academic work bridges classical studies with Renaissance and African diasporic reception, focusing on the enduring influence of antiquity in diverse cultural contexts.

• BA in Latin, Sweet Briar College
• MA in Cultural and Intellectual History, Warburg Institute, University of London
• MA, MPhil, PhD in Classics and Renaissance Studies, Yale University

Her research explores ancient cosmology, anthropology, ethnography, and the reception of classical antiquity in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Africa, and the African Diaspora. She is particularly interested in how classical narratives are reinterpreted across time and space, especially in postcolonial and African American contexts.

Her recent publications reveal a strong trend in cinematic and literary reception of ancient texts, such as Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq as a reimagining of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, and the use of classical rhetoric in W. E. B. Du Bois’s educational philosophy. Her work often engages with humanism, philosophy, art, and science in the Renaissance, and she is currently working on book projects related to Africana receptions of classical heroines and fifteenth-century humanist interpretations of Lucretius.

• Research Fellow, Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies
• Humanities Writ Large Faculty Fellow, Duke University

She is the creator of the Io Project, an online resource on the history and reception of Classics in Africa and the African diaspora, and is co-editing A Companion to Latin Epic 14–96 CE with Wiley-Blackwell. Her advising and scholarly leadership reflect a commitment to interdisciplinary and globally engaged classical scholarship.