by James J. Clauss
Professor Jackie Murray’s career in Classics started at the University of Guelph, where she double majored in Classical Studies and Latin with Profs. Victor Matthews, Padraig O’Cleirigh, and Kristin Lord. This was followed by an MA in Classics from Western University (London Ontario). Afterwards Jackie returned to Guelph to pursue a PhD in Ancient Philosophy with a focus on the Phaedo. But during her first year there, she attended the Groningen workshop on Apollonius (1998) and decided that Hellenistic literature was the direction she wanted to take. She chose the Department of Classics at the University of Washington and never looked back. Jackie completed her PhD (The Polyphonic Argo) in 2005 and landed her first job at Temple University, where she developed a course on the topic of race and ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean, employing theoretical approaches from Critical Race Studies. From Temple she moved to Skidmore College, during which time she received an Andrew Heiskell/NEH Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (2011-12), the first Black woman to be awarded the Rome Prize in Ancient Studies. In 2014 Jackie moved to the Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department at the University of Kentucky. Here she continued to rack up prestigious awards, including a Margo Tytus Fellowship for Visiting Scholars, University of Cincinnati (2017); a Fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies (2020), where she had been a Visiting Scholar in 2018; a DAAD Teaching Fellowship for Black Classicism Project (2021); and most recently a Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin (2022). Jackie will begin a new position as Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) in 2023. Her research and publications include Roman and Hellenistic literature, especially Apollonius, and race and ethnicity in the ancient world. Her book Neikos & the Poetics of Controversy: Apollonius against his Argonautic Predecessors (Harvard University Press, Center for Hellenic Studies) is expected to appear in early 2023.