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. Most recently, his interest have expanded to include Classical Receptions as well.

At Willamette, he teaches a wide variety of Greek and Latin classes. With Latin students, he has read, for instance, the love poems of Catullus, Martial's Epigrams and Liber Spectaculorum, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Horace's Odes, 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 on and by Roman women. With Greek students, he's enjoyed reading and discussing Homer's Odyssey, Homer's Iliad, 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) and chairs our interdisciplinary contract major in Comparative Literature and the History of Ideas (CLHI). He is the Vice-President of the Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest (CAPN) and 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.