Barbara Lawatsch-MeltonVisiting Instructor of Classics

Combining a background in classics with modern history allows Barbara Melton to pursue her passion for classical receptions while teaching Latin language and literature as well as history courses. Prior to completing her PhD at the University of Salzburg (Austria) she received a Diploma in American Studies as a Fulbright student at Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts). She taught at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the University of Minnesota before arriving in Atlanta and has been teaching at Emory since 2002.

Her research interests and student mentoring focus on classical receptions in a wide range of contexts including late antiquity, early modern Europe, and especially British North America up to the present.   She has published an edition of Andrew White’s Voyage to Maryland (1633): Relatio Itineris in Marilandiam (1995) and studies on seventeenth-century monastic life and historiography. Her recent work has appeared in Classics in the Modern World: A ‘ Democratic Turn’?  ed. L. Hardwick and S.J. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Europäische Geschichtswelten (European Cultures of History), ed. Thomas Wallnig (Berlin, Munich: De Gruyter, 2012), and Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany, ed. Lynne Tatlock (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2010). ;Classical Receptions Journal 7/1, a special issue on The Legacy of the Roman Senate, includes her essay “Constructing Roman Senators in Imperial Germany” (2015).

Keeping abreast of current receptions she writes theater and music reviews of productions at the summer festival in Salzburg, Austria. Tips on classical receptions in contemporary America are always welcome!