Contact Information

• bshook@unca.edu
• 251-6294
• 127B Whitesides Hall

Office Hours

• Monday 10:00 am - 11:00 am
• Tuesday 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
• Wednesday 10:00 am - 11:00 am
• Thursday 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
• Note: And by appointment.

Dr. Brian S. Hook is a native of the Carolinas. He came to the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 2001, and both Asheville and UNC Asheville now feel like home. Dr. Hook received the 2007-2008 Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities and the Distinguished Service Award in 2015.

Dr. Hook was one of the editors for The Asheville Reader: The Ancient World (2004) for UNC-Asheville's Humanities 124 course. He has served as the coordinator for Humanities 124 and as the director of the Humanities Program. He is currently the general editor for Humanities Readers Project, the revision of the Humanities Readers for HUM 124, 214 and 324 in conjunction with UNC Press.

Education

• Ph.D., Ancient Mediterranean Studies
  Duke University (1992)
• B.A., Ancient Mediterranean Studies
  University of South Carolina (1986)

Research Interests

His academic interests are broad and include Greek and Latin epic and tragedy, rhetoric and philosophy, and Christianity and heroic literature. Current research interests focus on Roman satire, especially Juvenal, irony, and ancient philosophy, especially Plato. He is particularly interested in the appropriations, applications, and contortions of philosophy in ancient literature.

Publications

• In development includes articles on Juvenal's fifteenth satire
• In development poetry in Cicero's Pro Archia
• 2011: "A Note on the Baths in Confessions IX,xii,32” with D. Davis, Augustinian Studies 42, 49-56
• 2008: "Umbricius Caligatus: Wordplay in Juvenal 3.322" in Collection Latomus: Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, vol. 14, 365-374
• 2008: Review of P. Campana's commentary on Juvenal, Satura X (Classical Review 58 166-167)
• 2005: "Oedipus and Thyestes Among the Philosophers: Incest and Cannibalism in Plato, Diogenes, and Zeno" Classical Philology 100, 17-40
• 2004: Editor for The Asheville Reader: The Ancient World for UNC-Asheville's Humanities 124 course
• 2000: Heroism and the Christian Life: Reclaiming Excellence, co-authored with R. R. Reno (Westminster John Know)
• 2000: "Nothing Within Which Passeth Show: Character and Color in Senecan Tragedy" in Seneca in Performance (Duckworth).
• reviewed F. Jones, Juvenal and the Satiric Genre (for Classical Journal)

Recent Papers

“The Socratic End of Juvenal Satire 1 and the Imitation of Lucilius and Horace,” SCS Annual Conference, Boston, MA, Jan. 4-7, 2018

"The Socratic Sneer: Plato and Roman Satire" Tenth Annual Comparative Literature Conference at the University of South Carolina: "Plato and Platonisms: The Constitution of a Tradition," March 20-23, 2008, Columbia, SC