Gotthard Karl Galinsky (February 7, 1942 – March 9, 2024) was an American academic best known for his research on

Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

Early life

Gotthard Karl Galinsky was born on February 7, 1942 in

Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

. He finished high school in Germany and then moved to the U.S., where he went to Bowdoin College. He received his B.A. from

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. It was chartered in 1794. The main Bowdoin campus is located near Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River. In a ...

in 1963 and his Ph.D. in

Classics Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and ...

from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1966. In 2011, he received an honorary Doctor of

Philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Galinsky was the ''Floyd A. Cailloux Centennial Professor of Classics'' and ''Distinguished University Teaching Professor'' at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

Career

Galinsky published widely on Roman literature, social and cultural history, art, and religion and was a noted expert on Augustan Rome and the role of memory in Rome. Other interests included the reception of classical themes and heroes (especially Herakles) and the influence of Rome on American popular culture. Galinsky received many awards for both his teaching and scholarship, including NEH,

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...

, and

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

s. He was awarded an International Research Prize from the Max Planck Society for 750,000 euros and directed the project ''Memoria Romana''. Galinsky held visiting appointments in the U.S., Europe, Argentina, and New Zealand and received numerous grants from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

, including three summer seminars for college and university faculty at the American Academy in Rome, where he was also a Resident in 1973. He was a consultant on academic programs to many institutions, including the South African Ministry of Research after the end of the

Apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

regime. Galinsky regularly taught large introductory courses on

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

and Rome and on Greece and Rome in Film.

Death

Galinsky died on March 9, 2024, at the age of 82.

Selected publications

*''Aeneas, Sicily and Rome.'' Princeton Univ. Press, 1969. *''The Herakles Theme''. Oxford:Blackwell, 1972. *''Ovid's Metamorphoses: an introduction to the basic aspects''. Univ. of California Press, 1975. *''Classical and Modern Interactions: postmodern architecture, multiculturalism, decline and other issue''s. Univ. of Texas Press, 1992. *''Augustan culture: an interpretive introduction''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. *Ed., ''The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus". Cambridge University Press, 2005. *''Augustus: introduction to the life of an emperor.'' Cambridge University Press, 2012. German transl. 2013. *Ed., ''Memoria Romana: Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory''. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome suppl. vol. 10. University of Michigan Press, 2014. *Ed., with K. Lapatin, ''Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire.'' Getty Museum Publications, Los Angeles, 2015. *Ed., ''Memory in Rome and Early Christianity.'' Oxford Univ. Press (UK), 2016.

References

1942 births 2024 deaths 21st-century American historians American male non-fiction writers University of Texas at Austin faculty 21st-century American male writers American people of German descent Writers from Strasbourg {{US-historian-stub