Assistant Professor
PhD (University of Chicago)
Contact Information
Email: kenneth.yu@utoronto.ca
Room: LI 126
Bio and Research
Trained as a classicist and historian of religions, my research and teaching interests revolve around ancient Greek religion, the Second Sophistic, and the knowledge practices that underpin postclassical technical texts. My current book project, which combines these issues, traces the philosophical, scientific, and literary strategies by which ancient intellectuals, in genres as diverse as Aristotelian problemata, Homeric commentary, and ancient wonder literature, attempted to make sense of Greek myth and cult in the Hellenistic and Imperial Greek period. I am also interested in (and have led research projects on) the history and theory of ancient Greek book titles and entitling practices.
Recent and forthcoming publications are on Plato’s anxieties about Bacchic dance in the Laws, Aristophanes’ view of oracles, the hermeneutics of ancient Greek sacrifice, the historiography of ancient Greek religion, and paradoxography. I have held fellowships at the Collège de France, the Hardt Foundation in Switzerland, and the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium.
I am co-PI with colleagues in Religion, East Asian Studies, and German (among other disciplines) of a five-year SSHRC-funded research project on Practices of Commentary: https://globalcommentary.utoronto.ca/
Specialization: Greek Literature and Religion
Detailed CV and List of Publications