Jim O'Hara received his A.B. in Classics from the College of the Holy Cross in 1981, and his Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan in 1986. From 1986 until his 2001 arrival in Chapel Hill, he taught at Wesleyan University, where he was Professor of Classical Studies and served as department chair.
His research and teaching interests are in Greek and especially Latin poetry, with special interests in the Augustan period and in epic; other interests include Roman Civilization (he has taught Roman law to undergraduates), Hellenistic poetry, the ancient novel, and the mythological handbook. His book Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's Aeneid (Princeton 1990) argues that readers of the Aeneid are put in a position similar to that of characters within the poem who receive deceptively optimistic prophecies. In True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor 1996), he discusses etymologizing in Greek and Roman authors before Vergil, and the form and function of Vergilian wordplay, and offers an annotated catalogue of examples of etymological wordplay in Vergil.
His articles and book reviews have dealt often with Vergil, but also with Homer, Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Catullus, Lucretius, Propertius, Ovid, Lucan, and the novel, as well as a strange lost Greek poem on the "six sex changes of Tiresias" by a mysterious poet named Sostratus.
His latest project, entitled Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid
and Lucan, has recently been published and appears in the series "Roman Literature in its Contexts," edited by
Stephen Hinds and Denis Feeney. The book explores the possibility of interpreting, rather
than explaining away, inconsistencies in Greek and Roman poetry, especially Roman epic,
and offers a unique perspective from which to consider recent approaches to Latin
literature.
E-mail: jimohara@unc.edu
Personal Website with Curriculum Vitae
