
Thomas E. Jenkins, Ph.D.
- Professor , Classical Studies
I have been a Professor of Classical Studies at Trinity since 2001, a former chair of the Department, and former Director of the Collaborative for Learning and Teaching, Trinity’s faculty and staff development center. As a classics professor, I’m especially interested in how the ancient world is reflected in contemporary media, including novels, performance, and even video games! My second book, Antiquity Now (Cambridge 2015), is now in paperback, and a ’sequel’ is in the works (“Antiquity Tomorrow”). Recent articles—published and forthcoming—include those on the Netflix TV show Troy: Fall of a City; the Broadway musical Hadestown; and adaptations of Homer for the contemporary stage. I’m proud that I’ve been teaching a cutting-edge course on classical reception since 2003—Antiquity and Modernity—along with a recent spin-off: Reimagining Tragedy. I team-teach the latter with my awesome colleague in theater, Kyle Gillette, with a focus on guiding students in the creation of their own versions of Greek or Roman tragedy. (And not just in theater! We’ve had podcasts, board games, photo shoots, collages, short stories, trailers, and some excessively traumatizing props.)
For almost twenty years, I’ve been an occasional theater and opera critic for the San Antonio Current and am passionate about the role and power of ‘public humanism’: the dissemination of scholarship and analysis to a broader public. Some of my columns may be found here.
For a copy of my full c.v. please email me at tjenkins@trinity.edu.
“Translations of Homer to the Stage,” for The Companion to the Translation of Greek and Latin Epic (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming). Edd. Armstrong and Lanieri. 8000 words.