Carol Dougherty
Professor of Classical Studies
Specializes in the literature and culture of Ancient Greece; teaches Greek drama and myth, and the theme of travel in literature.
Carol Dougherty is Professor Classical Studies and Director of Comparative Literature at Wellesley College. Her research focuses on the intersection of history, literature, and culture of archaic and classical Greece (8-6th centuries BCE). Her first two books explored the transformative and tumultuous period of the eighth century—a time when Greeks settled new lands, engaged in far-reaching trade networks, and embarked upon radical new experiments in politics, economics, and communication. The Poetics of Colonization (Oxford University Press 1993) reads the kinds of stories the Greeks told themselves about founding new colonies abroad, and The Raft of Odysseus (Oxford University Press 2001) looks at ways that Homer’s Odyssey represents a culture engaged in negotiating a new place for itself in a rapidly changing world. Her most recent book, Travel and Home in Homer and Contemporary Literature (Oxford University Press 2019) brings the Odyssey together with readings of contemporary novels (e.g. M. Robinson, Housekeeping, M. Ondaatje, The English Patient, C. McCarthy, The Road) that are equally interested in questions of travel and homecoming. Her current research explores the way that Athenian tragedy confronts and elaborates the challenges that mobility places upon issues of civic belonging and identity in Athens of the fifth century BCE.
Education
- B.A., Stanford University
- M.A., University of California-Santa Barbara
- M.A., Princeton University
- Ph.D., Princeton University
Current and upcoming courses
There's No Place Like Home
WRIT180
From Homer's Odyssey to the Wizard of Oz, we've learned again and again that “there's no place like home.” In this course, we will explore our complicated relationship to house and home. How does the physical structure of a house intersect with the more intangible emotions, aspirations, and sense of identity we associate with the place we call home. How are house and home placed in tension with movement? Can you take your home with you? Why do we “return home” but “keep house”? What does it mean to get homesick? What makes a house haunted? The course will combine readings of ancient (e.g., Homer's Odyssey) and contemporary fiction (e.g., Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel, Marilynne Robinson) with discussions of contemporary film and visual culture.
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Tragic Times: Ancient Greek Drama and Contemporary Adaptations
CLCV210
Antigone in Ferguson, Medea from Mexico, Trojan Women in Syria – why do contemporary playwrights and filmmakers keep returning to ancient Greek tragedy? This class will combine discussion of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in their original fifth-century BCE context with analysis of their afterlife on the contemporary stage and screen. How do contemporary, cross-cultural re-imaginings of ancient Greek plays like Antigone, Medea and the Trojan Women, unsettle our familiar readings of Athenian drama? How do these age-old plays create a productive space for questions about politics, community and power that continue to preoccupy us today? (CLCV 210 and CPLT 211 are cross-listed courses.)