Sandridge advances digital humanities

Since completing his PhD in 2005, Norman Sandridge has distinguished himself for his work in the digital humanities, creating an open-source and collaborative commentary to Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus and blogging about his latest research ideas. He took a leave from Howard University to develop these projects as a fellow at Duke University for the academic year. 

Norman Sandridge
PhD ’05 

Upon completion of my dissertation on Jason’s leadership in Apollonius’ Argonautica in 2005 (Bill Race was my director, with Sharon James and Jim O’Hara as readers), I took a position at Howard University in Washington, DC. I have been teaching a range of courses in Greek and Latin and in translation, but the constellation of topics I find myself perennially marveling at consists of leadership, the emotions, and the digital humanities. My work on Greek tragedy has looked at leaders who experience pity and what they are willing to do to save others, even if it jeopardizes their standing in the community. In 2012 I published a book on Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus that explored the significance of philanthropia (the love of humanity), philotimia (the love of being honored), and philomatheia (the love of learning) in Xenophon’s theory of leadership.

I became an associate professor at Howard in 2012 and an ongoing fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, where I work on projects involving leadership, outreach, and hybrid-online education. One of our ongoing workshops, called the “Ephebe’s Journey,” introduces public policy interns in DC to ancient ideas of citizenship and leadership. In the spring of 2014 I taught a collaborative online course on Homer’s Iliad with three other institutions (Sweet Briar College, Elon University, the University of Southern Maine), using a variety of platforms and approaches, including content from Greg Nagy’s HeroesX Course.

This year I am at Duke University on a Humanities Writ Large Fellowship, working on two related projects. One is to improve upon Cyrus’ Paradise, a collaborative online (and open-source) commentary to Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus.  I am also working on a longer research project to explore the relationship between ancient leadership and personality disorder, e.g., psychopathy, narcissism, paranoia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Currently, I am developing the framework for this interdisciplinary investigation with a series of posts on Medium.

Outside of my research and teaching, I have become pretty serious about long-distance running (partly because I had such bad insomnia while writing my dissertation!). I always look forward to meeting up at the SCS with UNC alums, like David Carlisle and Sarah Bond, to get in a long run and catch up on the department. This year I completed my tenth marathon with a PR of 3:11:56 and hope to run the Boston Marathon for a third time in 2016. Finally, as of 2013 my wife Kimberly and I became proud parents of our daughter, Sibyl Dorothy, who has been a continual source of joy and wonder since day one.