Michael C.J. Putnam
W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor Emeritus of Classics:
Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature
Phone: +1 401 863 2203
Phone 2: +1 401 863 1267
Michael_Putnam@brown.edu
His primary interest is Latin literature. Books include The Poetry of the Aeneid (1965); Virgil's Pastoral Art (1970); Tibullus (1973); Virgil's Poem of the Earth (1979); Essays on Latin Lyric, Elegy, and Epic (1982); Artifices of Eternity (1986); Virgil's Aeneid (1995); Virgil's Epic Designs (1998); Horace's Carmen Saeculare (2000); Maffeo Vegio: Short Epics (2004); Poetic Interplay (2006); the Vergilian Tradition, coedited with Jan Ziolkowski (2008); Jacopo Sannazaro: The Latin Poetry (2009).
Biography
Michael Putnam joined the Brown faculty in 1960 after teaching for a year at Smith College. He was Acting Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies 1961-62 and served as one of its Senior Fellows from 1971 to 1986. In 1963-64 he held a Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome where he was later a Resident (1970) and Mellon Professor in Charge of the Classical School (1989-91). Since 1991 he has been a Trustee. He was elected a director of the American Philological Association in 1972 and has since served the Association as President (1982),Financial Trustee (1997-2004) and as a member of its Development Committee (1995-). He received the Association's Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit in 1971. In 1985 he was Townsend Professor at Cornell University and inaugurated the Townsend Lectures. For 1987-88 he was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study and for 1994-95 a Visiting Scholar for Phi Beta Kappa. During the spring of 2004 he gave the Martin Classical Lectures at Oberlin College. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the American Philosophical Society, and has received Guggenheim, ACLS and NEH Fellowships. He is a member of Italy's Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana. From 1967 to 1987 he was Sole Trustee of the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, and is currently a member of its Board of Advisors. Since 1997 he has served as a member of the Selections Committee of the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University.
Professor Putnam's primary interest is in Latin literature and its influence, with a specialty in the poetry of Republican and Augustan Rome. His books include The Poetry of the Aeneid (1965); Virgil's Pastoral Art: Studies in the Eclogues (1970); Tibullus: A Commentary (1973); Virgil's Poem of the Earth (1979); Essays on Latin Lyric, Elegy, and Epic (1982); Artifices of Eternity: Horace's Fourth Book of Odes (1986); Virgil's Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence (1995); Virgil's Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid (1998); and Horace's Carmen Saeculare: Ritual Magic and the Poet's Art (2000). He has recently edited and translated Maffeo Vegio: Short Epics (2004); Poetic Interplay: Catullus and Horace (2006); the Vergilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years, coedited with Jan Ziolkowski (2008); Jacopo Sannazaro: The Latin Poetry (2009). He is the author of numerous articles and reviews.
At Brown, as well as chairing the Department of Classics for several periods, he is also a member of the Comparative Literature faculty as well as of the Committee on Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. In 2003 he received the University's John Rowe Workman Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities.
Interests
His specialty is the Latin literature of the republic and early Roman empire. He has recently published books on the interrelationship of the poets Catullus and Horace, and The Virgilian Tradition: The First 1500 Years, coedited with Jan Ziolkowski (2008). He is at work on several articles and on a monograph on Ovid's Tristia. He is also commissioned to complete a two-volume set on the Latin poetry of Jacopo Sannazaro for the I Tatti Renaissance Library.
Degrees
B. A. Harvard, 1954; M. A. Harvard, 1956; Ph. D. Harvard, 1959; Ll. D. (hon.) Lawrence University, 1985
Awards
LL.D. (Hon.) Lawrence University, 1985
American Philological Association: Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit (for Virgil's Pastoral Art ), 1971
American Council of Learned Societies: Fellow, 1983-84
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation: Fellow, 1966-67
National Endowment for the Humanities: Senior Fellow, 1973-74
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Member, American Philosophical Society
Awarded the Centennial Medal by the American Academy in Rome
Affiliations
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Philological Association
American Philosophical Society
Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
Classical Association of New England
Classical Association of the Atlantic States
Medieval Academy of America
Accademia Virgiliana
Funded Research
N/A
Curriculum Vitae
Download Michael C.J. Putnam's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format
