Biography
Brian Walters (B.A. University of Missouri 1998, M.A. University of Kansas 2003, Ph.D UCLA 2011) is Associate Professor of the Classics and Translation Studies. His research focuses on Latin of all periods, but with particular emphasis on Cicero and the literature of the late republic.
Research Interests
Latin Literature, Cicero and the Late Republic, Classical Reception
Research Description
Professor Walters works on Latin literature, with an emphasis on Cicero and the literature of the late republic and early empire. His recent book, The Deaths of the Republic: Imagery of the Body Politic in Ciceronian Rome (Oxford, 2020), examined depictions of the state as a body in republican political discourse of the first century BCE, exploring their resonances and the ways they were implicated in the politics of the period. He has also written on Ciceronian oratory and authorship, Latin metaphor (especially disintegration and disease), and poetics, and has translated Lucan's Civil War (Hackett, 2015) and a variety of other poetic works (see, e.g. Arion 25.1 and 25.3) for publication.
He is currently working on a book on Cicero's poetry and trying to complete translations of Virgil's Georgics and Lucretius' The Nature of Things.
When not teaching Latin, he frequently offers courses on Neronian Life and Literature, Roman Civilization, and Roman Material Culture.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, Classics
Associate Professor, Program in Medieval Studies
Recent Publications
Walters, B. (2020). The Deaths of the Republic: Imagery of the Body Politic in Ciceronian Rome. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198839576.001.0001
Walters, B. (2019). Sulla's Phthiriasis and the Republican Body Politic. Mnemosyne, 72(6), 949-971. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568525X-12342610
Lucretius, & Walters, B. C., (TRANS.) (2018). A Prayer for Peace. Arion - Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 25(3), 147-148. https://doi.org/10.2307/arion.25.3.0147
Walters, B. C., (TRANS.) (2017). From Propertius. Arion - Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 25(1), 37-38. https://doi.org/10.2307/arion.25.1.0037
Walters, B. (2017). The circulation and delivery of Cicero's Post Reditum ad Populum. Transactions of the American Philological Association, 147(1), 79-99.