Emily Allen-Hornblower

Emily Allen-Hornblower is an Associate Professor of Classics at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and serves as Undergraduate Director in the Department of Classics. She holds a PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard University and previously studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and Sorbonne in Paris. Her research focuses on ancient cultural history, Archaic Greek epic, Attic drama, Greek mythology, religion, gender studies, and the reception of classical texts in modern contexts.

Her work bridges classical scholarship with contemporary social issues, notably through prison education programs. She received a Whiting Foundation Grant to foster dialogues between incarcerated individuals and classical texts, exemplified by her work with Marquis McCray, a formerly incarcerated student who studied classics through Rutgers’ prison program. Key publications include From Agent to Spectator: Witnessing the Aftermath in Ancient Greek Epic and Tragedy (2016) and articles on Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Herodotus’ ethnographies, and Caesar’s descriptions of Germanic societies.

Her teaching extends beyond academia to prison settings, emphasizing the humanizing power of classical literature in addressing mass incarceration. She has moderated public conversations on these themes, such as Rediscovering Our Humanity: Reading the Classics Behind Bars and Beyond (2021).