Greg Anderson

Professor Anderson is the department's specialist in the history of ancient Greece. He is a graduate of the universities of Newcastle and London in his native Britain, and holds MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees in Classics from Yale University.

Professor Anderson's primary area of interest is political culture in Greek city-states during the archaic (700-480 BC) and classical (480-320 BC) periods. His work explores the dynamic interplay between politics and other key realms of human experience, especially art and architecture, cult, warfare, memory, and identity. His first book, The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 BC (University of Michigan Press, 2003), rethinks the beginnings of democracy and civic order in ancient Athens. His other publications cover a wide range of topics, from the origins of the ancient Olympic games to social memory formation in classical Athens. Professor Anderson is currently working on two book projects. One of these offers a fresh approach to the production of social order in classical Athens, examining the various ways in which the free conduct of inhabitants was directed towards socially useful purposes. The second project reconsiders patterns of early political development across the Greek world as a whole. Its ultimate aim is to offer a new way of looking at the creation of the world's first citizen-states.