Dougherty, Carol

views updated

Dougherty, Carol

PERSONAL:

Female.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Classical Studies, Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, professor of classical studies.

WRITINGS:

How Full of Briers: The Organizational Structure of the Non-profit Theatre Corporation, Orlando Publications (Pittsburgh, PA), 1983.

(Editor, with Leslie Kurke) Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer's "Odyssey," Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor, with Leslie Kurke) The Cultures within Ancient Greek Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Prometheus, Routledge (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Carol Dougherty is a professor of classical studies whose fields of interest include the intersection of literature and culture in the archaic and classical world. Her books include The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece, in which she studies the stories written by the Greeks who documented the way new cities were founded, her focus being on the tales rather than the actual events. In the introductory chapter, Dougherty writes that her purpose is to "look at the colonial tale as a cultural product, a topos that extends from the Homeric poems to Plutarch and beyond…. The narrative pattern, metaphors, and language of colonial discourse are informed by cultural phenomena such as purification practices, the Delphic oracle, marriage ideology, and Panhellenic competition, all of which belong to Greece as a whole and whose influence transcend individual time periodization."

Writing for the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Mark W. Edwards concluded that Dougherty "elucidates very clearly the ways in which new stories are constructed on old patterns, and often throws light on the underlying background. One feels that she is bringing us closer to the mentality of an ancient society, bringing us closer to the ways in which the Greeks, almost unconsciously, looked at a highly significant side of their own history. Her exposition is clear, and the book is a pleasure to read—a good introduction not only to the topic but also to the methodology employed."

In the same publication, David Baund reviewed The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer's "Odyssey," calling it "a sparkling study of the Odyssey. It offers insightful interpretations of a series of passages from the poem (embracing at times also Hesiod, Ibycus and more), while presenting also a much larger argument about the interplay of poetic discourse and archaic notions of the world around, including especially travel by sea and the encounters with other cultures which may follow."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April 1, 2003, Donald Lateiner, review of The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer's "Odyssey," p. 556.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, May 4, 1994, Mark W. Edwards, review of The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece; October 11, 2001, David Braund, review of The Raft of Odysseus.

Canadian Literature, fall, 1994, review of The Poetics of Colonization.

Choice, October 1, 2001, R. Eisner, review of The Raft of Odysseus, p. 306.

Classical Philology, January 1, 1995, Paul Cartledge, review of The Poetics of Colonization, p. 74; April 1, 2003, Erwin F. Cook, review of The Raft of Odysseus, p. 184.

Classical Review, January 1, 2003, review of The Raft of Odysseus, p. 6.

Journal of Folklore Research, January 1, 1996, William Hansen, review of The Poetics of Colonization, p. 86.

Journal of Hellenic Studies, January 1, 2005, Phiroze Vasunia, review of The Cultures within Ancient Greek Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration, p. 178.

Times Literary Supplement, September 29, 2006, "Trick Questions," p. 28.