Kenneth Yu

Kenneth Yu’s research encompasses three distinct areas that frequently intersect: Imperial Greek literature and its cultural and religious contexts; ancient Greek religion; and the ideologies and politics underwriting paideia (ancient education). He has an abiding interest in the history of classical scholarship as well as the history of textual and exegetical practices. Significant themes here include the disciplinary history of Greek religion; practices of commentary in Greek and Roman antiquity; and the limits of the notion of pseudepigraphy. Other topics that have recently engaged him are: religion in Plato’s Laws; ideas of collaboration in ancient scholarship; and aetiological reasoning across genres from the Homeric Hymns to Imperial antiquarian literature.  

His first book, Problems in Greek Religion: Constructing the Gods between Thauma and Philology, traces the habits of perception and styles of reasoning that guided ancient scholarly inquiry on myth and cult. This book concentrates on texts rarely accounted for in traditional studies on Greek religion, including Homeric commentary, ancient wonder literature (paradoxography), and ancient ethnography. It challenges the longstanding view that the ancient Greeks did not – indeed could not – conceptualize religion as a discrete value sphere.  

Ongoing publication projects are two edited volumes. The Oxford Handbook of Global Commentary compares premodern practices of commentary in a range of traditions, from China and South Asia across the Islamicate world and to the Mediterranean. A second volume investigates how ancient Greek writers entitled their works and what functions titles served for ancient scholars and readers (Titles in Ancient Greek Literature: Forms, Practices, and Theories of an Ancient Paratext). Both projects have received supported from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Practices of Commentary [2020-25]) and “What’s in a Name?” [2022-2025]). Another book-length project includes a study of the figure of the literary expert in antiquity and ancient debates around the value of literary criticism. Part of this research is the subject of his upcoming graduate seminar (The Tasks of Criticism: Ancient and Modern Explorations).  

Yu has held fellowships at the Collège de France, the Hardt Foundation in Switzerland, the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium, and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C. (2022-23).

His CV and publications can be found at Academia.edu