D. David Williams
Office Address: Cocke Hall B011
Office Hours: Tuesdays/Thursdays 1:00pm-2:00pm
David Williams is an Assistant Professor of Classics. He is an intellectual historian focusing on the literature and philosophy of archaic and classical Greece.
Research Interests
I am particularly interested in Athenian drama, Socrates and the Sophists, and Plato. I am currently at work on three long-term research projects related to these subjects. The first is a book on Aristophanes' engagement with contemporary intellectual culture. The second is a collaborative volume on the Sophist Hippias of Elis. The third is a comprehensive study of gnomic statements in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Additional in-progress research includes smaller projects on impiety trials in classical Athens, on some staging issues in Aristophanes, and on the Aristophanic scholia.
Selected Publications
"'Love's Philosophy": Aeschylus Fr. 44 and the Cosmological Power of Erōs.” American Journal of Philology 146.4 (Winter 2025): 591-629.
Review of M. Wright, Euripides and quotation culture. Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2025.04.20.
“A Penny for His Thoughts? Socrates ‘the Sophist’ and the Problem of Payment in Aristophanes’ Clouds,” Classical World 117.3 (Spring 2024): 235–57.
Review of A. Bagordo, Aristophanes. Georgoi - Daidalos (fr. 101-204). Übersetzung und Kommentar. Fragmenta Comica 10.4. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2023.09.09.
“Socrates and ‘the Sophists’ in Old Comedy,”Transactions of the American Philological Association 151.2 (Autumn 2022): 345–79.
Personal
I received a joint Ph.D. (2022) and M.A. (2016) from the Department of Classics and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. During my graduate studies, I also spent a year as a Regular Member of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (2018-19) and another as a visiting student at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (2021-22). Before arriving at UVA, I was a Solmsen Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (2023-24) and a visiting scholar in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2022-23).