Jenny Strauss Clay
William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor Emerita of Classics
Philology is that venerable art which requires of those who honor her one thing above all: to turn aside, to take one's time, to become still and slow.... Precisely for this reason, she is more necessary today than ever, precisely on this account, she attracts and enchants us most powerfully, in an age of "work," which is to say, haste, the unseemly and sweating hurry that wants to be "done" with everything right away, even with every old and new book. She herself will not so easily be done with anything, she instructs reading well, that means, slowly, deeply, carefully, regardfully, looking forward and backward, with second thoughts, with doors left open, reading with delicate fingers and eyes....F. Nietzsche, Morgenröte
Research Interests
The focus of my scholarly work has been on archaic Greek poetry, more specifically, what I call the theology of the early Greek poets, that is, their views on the relations between gods and men. Most recently a collection of articles old and new, Studies in Early Greek Theology, has been published by Mohr-Siebeck (2026). Some other recent projects and publications include: A commentary on Hesiod’s Theogony (2025) in collaboration with our own Thanasis Vergados (PhD 2007) for the Cambridge Green and Yellow series, the first in English since the standard M.L. West’s 1966 edition.
Mapping the Catalogue of Ships was another collaborative project with former UVa doctoral students, Ben Jasnow (PhD 2014) and Courtney Evans (PhD 2016) involving digital humanities and UVa’s Scholars Lab. We demonstrated that the Catalogue in Book 2 of the Iliad represented an itinerary, a mental journey, that used mnemonic techniques involving loci well known from ancient rhetorical writers.
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Ben and Courtney also assisted in the digital display that accompanies my Homer’s Trojan Theater (Cambridge 2011) that argued that Homer had a mental map of the battlefield, which illuminates many of the actions in the Iliad’s battle books. Once you start thinking spatially, you can’t stop, so I also attempted to map Hesiod’s underworld .
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“A Stroll through Hesiod’s Tartarus."
I also dabble in other areas of Greek and Latin poetry and am interested in problems of interpreting literary texts. I firmly believe in Slow Reading – that texts can tell you how they want to be read, if you listen long and carefully enough.
Some of my recent papers and reviews are available here.
Selected Publications
Books
Studies in Early Greek Theology. Mohr-Siebeck, 2026.
Hesiod: Theogony in collaboration with Thanasis Vergados. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Homer's Trojan Theater, Cambridge University Press, 2011. https://homerstrojantheater.iath.virginia.edu/
The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns. Princeton University Press. 1989, Reprint, Bloomsbury, 2006.
Hesiod's Cosmos. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Princeton University Press, 1983. Reprint, Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.
Locke's Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, with Robert Horwitz and Diskin Clay. Cornell University Press, 1990.
Mega Nepios: Il destinatorio nell'epos didascalico. The addressee in Didactic Epic. Special issue of Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 31 (1993). Co-edited by A. Schiesaro, P. Mitsis, and J. Strauss Clay.
Articles
“Religion in Hesiod.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion. Co-authored with Ivana Petrovic. 2026.
“Penelope’s Nostos: Weaving Wor[l]ds.” Arion 32 (2025): 4–12.
“Three Homeric Puzzles,” in collaboration with D. Mendelsohn. In Lux: Studies in Greek and Latin Literature in Honor of Lucia Athanassaki, ed. by M. Aloumpi and A. Agoustakis. De Gruyter (2024): 9–26.
“Achilles inaugurates his cult.” Greece and Rome Ser. 71(2024): 38-64.
“Divine and human in Odyssey 5.” In Homer in Sicily, ed. by S. Dova, C. Callaway, and G. Gazis. Parnassos Press (2023):93-106.
“Dionysiac evasions: Horace, Odes 2.19 and 3.25.” In Performance et « mimesis »: variations sur la lyrique cultuelle de la Grèce archaïque au Haut-Empire romain, ed. by N. Le Meur, B. Delignon, and O. Thévenaz. Kernos. Supplément; 40 (2022):77-85.
“Achilles Revolutionary? Homer, Iliad 1.191.” Classical Quarterly 72 (2022): 1–6.
“Hesiod Reads Empedocles.” In Hesiod and the Beginnings of Greek Philosophy, ed. by L.Iribarran and H. Konig. Brill (2022):198–217.
“Traversing No-Man’s Land.” Arion 29 (2021)1-13.
“Horace C. 2.6: The Intertextual Poetics of Friendship.” In Euphrosyne: Studies in Ancient Philosophy, History, and Literature in memory of Diskin Clay, ed. by P. Burian, J.S. Clay, and G.Davis. De Gruyter, 2020.
Personal
I received my degrees from Reed College, the University of Chicago, and the University of Washington and have taught at the University of California at Irvine and at the Johns Hopkins University before coming to Virginia. I have a daughter named Andreia and like traveling, especially around the Mediterranean, and gardening.