Kathy Gaca
Kathy Gaca, Associate Professor of Classics
Vanderbilt University
Kathy L. Gaca is Associate Professor of Classics at Vanderbilt University and she was the Hannah Seeger Davis Post-doctoral Fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University (1996-97). Her major research interests include Greek and Roman philosophy, mainly Platonic, Stoic, and Pythagorean ethics; Greek, Roman, and biblical history and social values; socially normative ideas in the Greek biblical traditions (Septuagint and New Testament); Philonic and patristic ethics; and social justice topics ancient and modern, especially pertaining to the effects of warfare on women and children. Her current book project is prospectively titled Armed and Sexual: Warfare against Women and Girls in Antiquity and the Modern Day. Her teaching and secondary research interests include Greek tragedy; Greek and Roman myth, epic, and lyric; women in antiquity; and the interrelations between material culture and the above interests. Prof. Gaca’s publications include The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Univ. of California Press, 2003) and numerous journal articles, including, most recently, ’Reinterpreting the Homeric Simile of Iliad 16.7-11: The Girl and Her Mother in Ancient Greek Warfare,’ American Journal of Philology 129 (2008), as well as ’Paul’s Uncommon Declaration in Romans 1:18-32 and its Problematic Legacy for Pagan and Christian Relations,’ Harvard Theological Review 92, ’Procreationism: The Reproductive Technology of the Pythagoreans,’ Classical Philology 95, ‘Early Stoic Eros: The Sexual Ethics of Zeno and Chrysippus and their Evaluation of the Popular Greek Erotic Tradition,’ Apeiron 33, and ‘Driving Aphrodite from the World: Tatian’s Encratite Principles of Sexual Renunciation,’ Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 53.
