Margaret Graver
Chair, Department of ClassicsAaron Lawrence Professor in Classics
Margaret Graver is the Aaron Lawrence Professor in Classics. Her areas of specialization is Hellenistic and Roman philosophy, especially the philosophy of mind and emotion. After completing her doctorate at Brown University, she taught briefly at Princeton University, then joined the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1996, where she offers a variety of courses on Greek and Roman Philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, Latin literature including Lucretius, Cicero, and Seneca, and on the Latin language. In addition to her teaching at Dartmouth, Prof. Graver regularly lectures and gives seminars at institutions throughout the U.S. and Europe, including two short-term appointments at French universities.
Her major publications include Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4, which is a translation with philosophical commentary of Cicero’s redaction of Stoic emotion theory; Stoicism and Emotion, treating all aspects of Stoic thought on the mind, affective response, and character development; and most recently a complete annotated translation of Seneca’s Letters on Ethics in collaboration with A.A. Long of the University of California at Berkeley. Numerous article-length pieces have appeared in scholarly journals and collections.
Courses
Selected Publications
Seneca: Letters on Ethics. Translated and with an Introduction and Commentary by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long. Chicago, 2015; paperback 2017.
Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago, 2007; paperback 2009.
Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4. Chicago, 2002; paperback 2002.
“The Dregs of Romulus: Stoic Philosophy in Cicero’s Pro Murena and De Oratore.” In Ciceroniana 1.1 (2017). http://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/COL, online May 22, 2017.
“The Stoics' Ethical Psychology.” Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics, ed. C. Bobonich, 200-217. Cambridge, 2017.
“Seneca’s Peripatetics: Epistulae Morales 92 and Stobaean Doxography ‘C’.” In Arius Didymus on Peripatetic Ethics, ed. W. Fortenbaugh, 309-42. Transaction, 2017.
“Pre-Emotions and Reader Emotions in Seneca.” Maia 69 (2017), 281-96.
“The Performance of Grief: Cicero, Stoicism, and the Public Eye.” In Emotions in the Classical World: Methods, Approaches, and Directions, ed. Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis, 195-206. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2016.
“Anatomies of Joy: Seneca, Claranus, and the Gaudium Tradition.” In Hope, Joy and Affection in the Classical World, ed. Ruth R. Caston and Robert A. Kaster, 123-42. Oxford University Press, 2016.
“Seneca the Younger's Philosophical Works” (annotated bibliography of secondary works). Oxford Bibliographies in the Classics, ed. Dee Clayman. New York: Oxford University Press, April 25, 2016. View online here.
“Honor and the Honorable: Cato’s Discourse in De Finibus 3.” 119-46 in Cicero's De Finibus: Philosophical Perspectives (= Proceedings of the12th Symposium Hellenisticum), ed. J. Annas and Gabor Betegh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Speaking Engagements
“The Psychology of Honor in Cicero’s De Re Publica.” At the University of Durham (England). Feb. 10, 2018. Conference Title: “New Perspectives on Cicero’s Philosophy.” Also at the University of Cambridge, Feb. 12, 2018, and at the University of Edinburgh, Feb. 15, 2018.
"The Dispassionate Life." At Stoicon in Toronto, Oct. 14, 2017 (visit http://modernstoicism.com/interview-with-margaret-graver/
"How not to feel what there is to feel: Cynic apatheia, atomist ataraxia, Stoic apatheia." At the University of Bern, Switzerland, June 8, 2017.
“The Money-Box, the Mouse, and the Six-Footed Scurrying Solecism: Satire and Riddles in Seneca’s Letters.” At Cornell University, April 25, 2017.
Six lectures at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, March - April 2016: “Introduction à Sénèque” (March 15); “Le loisir et la lecture” (March 24); “Sénèque contre Aristote” (March 31); “Les émotions et les sentiments du lecteur” (April 1); “Le lecteur-abeille et l’écriture de soi” (April 8); “Épicure, maître de Sénèque ?” (April 11, rescheduled to Paris-3)
Works in Progress
Prof. Graver is currently working on a collection of essays on Seneca’s philosophy, under contract with Cambridge University Press, and on a monograph studying Cicero’s reception of Stoic ethics throughout his career.