We are delighted to announce that Naomi Weiss (Professor of the Classics, Harvard University) will begin as Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies this July.
A scholar primarily of archaic and classical Greek literature and culture, Weiss has published widely on ancient Greek drama and its reception, music and chorality, and the relationship between pottery and poetry. She is the author of The Music of Tragedy: Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater (University of California Press 2018) and Seeing Theater: The Phenomenology of Classical Greek Drama (University of California Press 2023), which was awarded the 2024 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit from the Society for Classical Studies. She has co-edited Genre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry: Theories and Models (Brill 2020) and Music and Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds (Cambridge University Press 2021). Currently, she is working with Sarah Olsen on a new commentary on Euripides’ Orestes (under contract for Cambridge University Press), another co-edited volume (Cultural Poetics in Ancient Greece: New Directions), and a short monograph entitled Tragic Repetition. She is co-editor of Cambridge Elements in Greek and Roman Drama and Performance and on the editorial board for the American Journal of Philology.
Weiss joined the Harvard faculty in 2014 and has served as Chair of the Department of the Classics since 2024. Outside of her research and departmental service, she is committed to public-facing humanities. Most recently, she has launched a new CHS podcast, Ancient Greece Today, an initiative that brings together scholars and artists to explore the ancient Greek world and how it is used and reimagined in the present day.
Weiss will succeed Mark Schiefsky, C. Lois P. Grove Professor of the Classics, Harvard University, who has served as Director since 2021. Schiefsky has long been a key part of the CHS community, previously serving as a Senior Fellow in Hellenic Studies (2013–2017) and as Associate Director (2017–2021).
Under his leadership, the Center navigated the challenges posed by the pandemic and has undertaken many exciting initiatives, including new fellowship programs (summer fellowships and a joint fellowship with the Institute of Historical Research), the inclusion of student athletes in our Sport and Education program at Olympia, and collaborations with Harvard University’s Department of the Classics and with the École Normale Supérieure – Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (ENS – PSL). His directorship also saw the development of several digital humanities projects, including MediManus, a database of medical manuscripts provided with rich metadata for searching and analysis, and CHS Digital, a reading and annotation environment for manuscripts, antiquarian and rare books, maps, and papyri from library collections around the world.
We thank Mark Schiefsky for his devoted service to the CHS and look forward to welcoming Naomi Weiss in July.