Faculty Profiles

Ellen G. Millender is Omar and Althea Hoskins Professor of Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Humanities. She received a B.A. and M.A. in Classics from Brown University, a B.A. in Literae Humaniores from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in the Graduate Group in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Millender joined the Reed faculty in 2002 and received tenure in 2005. She teaches Humanities 110 (the first-year humanities class), Greek and Latin at all levels, and courses in Greek and Roman history and historiography. Her research focuses on both the history of ancient Sparta and Athenian representations of Spartan society in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. She has published articles on a wide range of topics in Spartan social, political, and intellectual history, including literacy, kingship, military organization, and sexual and gender mores. Professor Millender’s recent work includes chapters on Spartan women and kingship in the Blackwell Companion to Sparta (A. Powell, ed., 2018), “Athens, Sparta, and the Τέχνη of Deliberation” in The Greek Superpower: Sparta in the Self-Definitions of Athenians, 33-60 (P. Cartledge and A. Powell, eds., 2018), and “A Contest in Charisma: Cynisca’s Heroization, Spartan Royal Authority, and the Threat of Non-Royal Glorification” in Political Religions in the Greco-Roman World: Discourses, Practices and Images, 34-63 (E. Koulakiotis and C. Dunn, eds., 2019). Her forthcoming publications focus on Spartan austerity, Spartan leadership, and the Athenian author Xenophon's construction of Spartan obedience.

Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Department webpage