Sarah B. Pomeroy is an American
Professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...
of
Classics
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
.
Early life and education
Sarah Pomeroy was born in New York City in 1938.
She attended the
Birch Wathen School, taking Latin and ancient history among other subjects.
She graduated high school at age 16, and began a degree course at
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
in Classics, taking courses at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
alongside those at Barnard, due to the small size of the Barnard department at the time.
Pomeroy graduated in 1957, at the age of nineteen, and began a course of graduate study at Columbia, under the supervision of
Eve Harrison and
Otto Brendel.
During her graduate study she worked on papyrology with John Day, and from 1962 to 1963 she also undertook a course of study in
Roman Law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor J ...
at Columbia.
Her PhD dissertation studied the first published lease of an olive grove from Karanis in Egypt.
Academic career
Pomeroy moved to
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
in order to take up her first job in 1961, where she worked until 1962.
In 1964 she took a post as a lecturer at
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...
, where she remained until 1965.
She worked at
Brooklyn College
, mottoeng = Nothing without great effort
, established =
, parent = CUNY
, type = Public university
, endowment = $98.0 million (2019)
, budget = $123.96 m ...
from 1967 to 1968, before returning to Hunter in 1968, where she remained for the rest of her career.
She also began working as a faculty member in Classics at the Graduate School at
City University of New York
The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven pro ...
in 1978, and later was also appointed to the Program in
History
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
.
Pomeroy has been the recipient of multiple distinguished fellowships and awards over the course of her career. She held a
Ford Foundation Fellowship, was recognised in the “Salute to Scholars” reception by the City University of New York in 1981–1982,
and won the City University President's Award in Scholarship in 1995.
She was elected Guggenheim Fellow at the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowships to professionals who have demonstrated exceptional ...
in 1998, and has received grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...
, and the American Numismatic Society.
In 2003 she gave the Josephine Earle Memorial Lecture at Hunter College. She has also been elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
.
Scholarship and influence
Pomeroy's first book, ''
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity'' was published in 1975 and is one of the first English works on women's history in any period.
Its lasting influence led to its reissue in 1994, and it has been described by an editor at
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
as "one of the five paradigm-changing books of the 20th century."
The work has been translated into German, Italian and Spanish.
It has since been used as a textbook in many university-level courses on gender studies,
and Pomeroy herself describes the book as being part of her teaching the "first course in America on women in antiquity."
Her other works include ''Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary'' (1994), ''Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities'' (1998), ''Spartan Women'' (2002), and, with Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, the textbooks ''Ancient Greece: a Political, Social, and Cultural History'' (4th edition, 2017) and ''A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture'' (3rd edition, 2011).
Books
* ''
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity'' (Schocken, 1975);
* ''Ancient history (with
Stanley M. Burstein, 1984);
* ''Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Philopator ( grc-gre, Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ}, "Cleopatra the father-beloved"; 69 BC10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler.She was also a ...
'' (Schocken, 1984);
* ''Women's History and Ancient History'' (Chapel Hill, 1991);
* ''Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary'', with
Xenophon
Xenophon of Athens (; grc, Ξενοφῶν ; – probably 355 or 354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian, born in Athens. At the age of 30, Xenophon was elected commander of one of the biggest Greek mercenary armies o ...
(Clarendon Press, 1994);
* ''Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities'' (Oxford University Press, 1997);
* ''Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History'' (with Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Oxford University Press, 1999);
* ''
Plutarch
Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for hi ...
’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife: English Translations, Commentary, Interpretive Essays, and Bibliography'' (Oxford University Press, 1999);
* ''Spartan Women'' (Oxford University Press, 2002);
* ''A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture'' (with Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Oxford University Press, 2004);
* ''The Murder of Regilla: A Case of Domestic Violence in Antiquity'' (Harvard University Press, 2007);
* ''Pythagorean Women'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013);
* ''
Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 164713 January 1717) was a German naturalist and scientific illustrator. She was one of the earliest European naturalists to observe insects directly. Merian was a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss M ...
: Artist, Scientist, Adventurer'' (with Jeyaraney Kathirithamby, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018);
*''Benjamin Franklin, Swimmer: An Illustrated History'' (American Philosophical Society Press, 2021);
References
Further reading
* Scanlon, Jennifer (ed.) ''American Women Historians, 1700s-1990s: A Biographical Dictionary''. Greenwood Press 1996.
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pomeroy, Sarah B.
1938 births
Living people
21st-century American historians
Graduate Center, CUNY faculty
Women's historians
Scholars of ancient Greek history
Scholars of Roman history
Women classical scholars
American women historians
Barnard College alumni
Columbia University alumni
21st-century American women writers
Brooklyn College faculty
American classical scholars