Ortwin Knorr

Professor Knorr has written a book on the Satires of Horace and a dozen articles on the comedies of Plautus and Terence, the Odes and Satires of Horace, and on the anti-heretic writings of two Greek church fathers, John of Damascus and Epiphanius of Salamis. More recently, his interests have expanded to include Classical Receptions as well.

At Willamette, he teaches a wide variety of Greek and Latin classes. He guides Intermediate Latin Prose students, for example, through a selection of fascinating texts from 400 years of Latin prose. This selection includes letters by the Stoic philosopher Seneca, the ghost stories of Pliny the Younger and Pliny's eye-witness report of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii in 79 CE, also excerpts from the lawyer Gaius' Institutiones (a Roman legal textbook), the comical Last Will of the Little Piglet (4th century CE), bits of Petronius' satirical novel about rich freedmen in the time of Nero, and Suetonius' Life of the Emperor Caligula.

With more advanced Latin students, Professor Knorr has read, for instance, the love poems of Catullus, Martial's satirical Epigrams and Liber Spectaculorum(celebrates the Colosseum's opening games in 80 CE), Vergil'sAeneid, Horace's Odes, Tibullus' Elegies, Ovid'sMetamorphoses, Seneca's Apocolocyntosis ("Pumpkinification", a biting satire on the failed apotheosis of the emperor Claudius), medieval Latin texts (including a comedy by Hrosvitha of Gandersheim), and a selection of documentary and literary texts about and by Roman women. 

With Greek students, he enjoys reading and discussing Homer's Odyssey, Homer's Iliad, Hesiod's Theogony, Lucian's True History (the first science fiction novel ever), and other texts.

In addition, Professor Knorr also offers courses in English translation on Greek and Roman literature, in particular, classes on Greek and Roman epic poetry, ancient theater, Roman women, and a College Colloquium (first-year seminar) on ancient Greece and Rome in modern film.

Professor Knorr heads Willamette's Center for Ancient Studies and Archaeology (CASA). He served as President of the Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest (CAPN) from 2020-2022 and is a former Program Coordinator of the Salem Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Professor Knorr joined the Willamette faculty in 2001, after teaching at Georg August University in Göttingen (Germany), the University of California Berkeley, the Johns Hopkins University, and Georgetown University.