Zoe Stamatopoulou

Zoe Stamatopoulou

Director of Graduate Studies in Classics
Associate Professor of Classics
PhD, University of Virginia
research interests:
  • Archaic and Classical Poetry

contact info:

mailing address:

  • MSC 1050-153-244
    WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
    ONE BROOKINGS DRIVE
    ST. LOUIS, MO 63130-4899

​Professor Stamatopoulou’s research and teaching encompass several aspects of ancient Greek literature and culture.

Stamatopoulou’s work focuses primarily on archaic and classical poetry (Homer, Hesiod, lyric poetry, drama). She is also interested in the symposium, in ancient biographies of poets, and in the reception of archaic Greece in Imperial Greek literature (esp. Plutarch).

recent courses

Sex and Gender in Greco-Roman Antiquity (L08 Classics 3152)

Ideas about sex and gender have not remained stable over time. The ancient Greeks and Romans had their own ideas - ideas that strike us today as both deeply alien and strikingly familiar. This course will consider questions such as: what constituted "normal" sex for the Greeks and for the Romans? What sex acts did they consider to be problematic or illicit, and why? What traits did the Greeks and Romans associate with masculinity? With femininity? How did society treat those who did not quite fit into those categories? How did peoples of the ancient world respond to same-sex and other-sex relationships, and was there an ancient concept of "sexuality"? How did issues of class, ethnicity, and age interact with and shape these concepts? How does an understanding of these issues change the way we think about sex and gender today? We will read an array of ancient texts in translation, consider various theoretical viewpoints, and move toward an understanding of what sex and gender meant in the ancient world.

    AMP: Classical to Renaissance Literature: Text and Traditions (L93 IPH 201C)

    Students enrolled in this course engage in close and sustained reading of a set of texts that are indispensable for an understanding of the European literary tradition, texts that continue to offer invaluable insights into humanity and the world around us. Homer's Iliad is the foundation of our class. We then go on to trace ways in which later poets and dramatists engage the work of predecessors who inspire and challenge them. Readings move from translations of Greek, Latin, and Italian, to poetry and drama composed in English. In addition to Homer, we will read works of Sappho, a Greek tragedian, Plato, Vergil, Ovid, Petrarch, and Shakespeare.

      The Greek SYMPOSION ( L08 Classics 45)

      This course explores the history, archaeology, material culture, and sociology of the symposion in ancient Greece. While we will focus mainly on the archaic and classical Greek symposion, we will also examine its reception in the Roman world. In this context, we will study art and literature produced for the symposion, as well as representations of the symposion in literature, especially in lyric poetry, drama, and philosophical prose.

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