Jeffrey Henderson

Biography

"Jeffrey Henderson is the William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature, and former Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, at Boston University. He was raised in Verona, New Jersey and educated at Kenyon College (BA 1968), where he also received an honorary degree in 1994, and Harvard University (MA 1970, PhD 1972). Henderson came to Boston University in 1991 as Chair of the Department of Classical Studies and was the founding Director of the College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program. He held previous professorships at Yale University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Southern California, where he chaired the Department of Classics and won the Raubenheimer Distinguished Faculty Award. Professor Henderson is known for his pioneering work on Greek drama and politics, and for his editions and translations of the comic playwright Aristophanes. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and for 2012 served as President of the American Philological Association, the principal professional organization of classicists in North America, in which he previously served as a Director and as the Vice President for Research. Since 1998 he has been the General Editor of the Loeb Classical Library, published by the Harvard University Press and the world’s premier series of texts and translations of Greek and Latin authors. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011."

Research Interest

Greek drama, especially comedy, and its social and political contexts; Greek sexuality and obscenity; the ancient novel; textual criticism and editing; the theory and practice of translating classical texts