Peter O’Connell
Associate Professor
Ph.D., 2011, Harvard University
I received my bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard and an M. Phil. degree from the University of Cambridge, where I was a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow. After receiving my doctorate, I was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford. I have also been a fellow of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC, and of the Willson Center for the Humanities at the University of Georgia.
Before coming to the University of North Carolina, I taught for ten years at the University of Georgia, where I was jointly appointed in the Department of Classics and the Department of Communication Studies.
My research and teaching focus on ancient rhetoric and poetics, Greek literature, and Classical Athens.
I am the author of The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory (University of Texas Press 2017) and am now working on a project about rhetoric, accounting, and aesthetics in Classical Athens. I have also published articles and chapters on the Attic orators, Athenian institutions, Sappho, and Gregory of Nazianzus.
I have taught Greek and Latin at all levels to undergraduates and graduate students, as well as courses on ancient rhetoric and Greek and Roman culture. In 2023, I was awarded the Sandy Beaver Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Georgia.
Email: poconnellATuncDOTedu