Lecturer
Contact
Office 5N5, Arts Building
Email hannah.sorscher@otago.ac.nz
Academic qualifications
2021: PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2017: MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2014: BA (Hons), University of Chicago
Background and research interests
A classical philologist and social historian, Hannah’s research and teaching interests are united by a fascination with family relationships and women’s lived experiences in the ancient Mediterranean world.
Her main area of expertise is Latin poetry, particularly Roman comedy – family dramas performed in mid-Republican Rome and Italy to diverse spectators who saw their own lives in these stories, and in fact the direct ancestor of the modern situational and romantic comedy.
She is also deeply interested in the experiences of second-phase warfare – the consequences of war for women and children – in Greek and Latin literature. She has held fellowships at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich and Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen as well as teaching positions in the United States, Rome, and Germany.
She has recently published a chapter on women’s and children’s experience of war in Homer’s Iliad (2024), and is currently working on a book about the representation of families of choice in Roman comedy, as well a series of translations and introductions of Menander’s Greek comedies, forthcoming in edited volumes with the University of Wisconsin Press.
Teaching
2025
- CLAS 105 Greek Mythology
Areas of research supervision
- Latin poetry
- Roman comedy
- Women in antiquity
- Roman social history
Publications
Sorscher, H. (2024). Astyanax's fate and second-phase warfare in the Iliad. In H.-M. Chidwick (Ed.), The body of the combatant in the ancient Mediterranean. (pp. 159-174). London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. doi: 10.5040/9781350240896.ch-008 Chapter in Book - Research
Sorscher, H. (2022). Scattering seeds: The Lyncus and Triptolemus episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Classical Philology, 117(4), 735-741. doi: 10.1086/721555 Journal - Research Article
Sorscher, H. (2021). Pro filia, pro uxore: Young women in the conventional and unconventional families of Roman comedy (PhD). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. doi: 10.17615/y7bh-qs74 Awarded Doctoral Degree
Sorscher, H. (2023, October). Representation and identity in Roman comedy. Verbal presentation at the Identität als Erzählung: Antike Perspektiven im Kontext [Identity as a narrative: Antique perspectives in context], Tübingen, Germany. Conference Contribution - Verbal presentation and other Conference outputs
Sorscher, H. (2023, January). Agency, knowledge, and consent in Moschus' Europa. Verbal presentation at the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) & Society for Classical Studies (SCS) Joint Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA. Conference Contribution - Verbal presentation and other Conference outputs