James I. Porter

James I. Porter is a distinguished Professor and Department Chair in Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds the Irving Stone Chair in Literature and is a Chancellor’s Professor. His career includes prior roles at the University of Michigan (1986-2007) and UC Irvine (2007-2015), where he directed the Critical Theory program. He has also held visiting professorships at Princeton and Bristol University.

Porter earned his BA from Swarthmore College and MA/PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. His research spans Nietzschean thought, ancient Greek/Roman aesthetics, Jewish critical philosophy, and classical reception studies. Notable works include The Sublime in Antiquity (2016), Homer: The Very Idea (2021), and Nietzsche and Literary Studies (2024). He received the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship and the C. J. Goodwin Award (2017).

His teaching focuses on critical theory, ancient philosophy, and modern thought. Ongoing projects include The Cynics: A Very Short Introduction and Philology in Exile: Spinoza to the Present. He co-edits the Oxford series Classical Presences and Postclassical Interventions.