Contact Information

• smills@unca.edu
• 251-6296
• 122 Whitesides Hall

Office Hours

• Monday 9:00 am - 10:00 am
• Tuesday 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
• Wednesday 9:00 am - 10:00 am
• Thursday 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
• Friday 9:00 am - 10:00 am
• Note: Or by appointment.

Sophie Mills, Professor in the Department of Ancient Mediterranean Studies, was born in London, England, and taught at Oxford and Bristol Universities for four years before coming to Asheville in 1994. She was Chair of the department from 1995 to 2011. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2011 UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, Ruth and Leon Feldman Professorship with Distinction for Outstanding Scholarship and Service in 2006-2007, University Research Council Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2006, and the Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities award in 2003. She has also served as the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities.

Education

• D. Phil., Ancient Mediterranean Studies
  Somerville College, Oxford University
• M.A., Ancient Mediterranean Studies
  Oxford University
• B.A., Ancient Mediterranean Studies
  Oxford University

Recent Courses Taught

• Greek 1 and 2
• Attic tragedy
• Ancient Sexuality
• Graeco-Roman Theatre and its reception
• Latin Lyric poetry
• Humanities 124

Teaching and Research Interests

Greek and Latin literature, Greek tragedy, and Greek history and historiography. Other projects include research on Imperialism, both Greek and Roman. She is particularly interested in understanding the national psyche of a world power (nation/empire), which results in imperialism.

Recent Publications

• Forthcoming in 2020 to be published by Routledge, a book on the rhetoric of the Athenian empire. Other recent publications include: -
• Look At It Carefully Now”: Athenian Tragedy And The “Talking Cure” for a special issue in Transcultural Psychology 2019 entitled “Other Psychologies”
• “Shield of the Achaeans”: essay on Sophocles’ Ajax, published in Looking at Ajax, ed. David Stuttard, Bloomsbury, 2019.
• “Images of Incest in Sophocles’ Antigone”, in David Stuttard (ed.), Looking at Antigone (Bloomsbury, 2017).
• “Dionysus Synergates: Critical Thought and Interdisciplinary Learning”. Paper co-written with Amy Lanou. Published in 2017-18 in the Classical Journal Forum.
• “Collaborating with Aeschylus (and Sophocles and Euripides and A Director and Cast”, Skene: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies, vol.2.1 (2017)
• “Ektos sumphorās: Tragic Athens”, Polis 34 (2017), 208-225.
• “The reception of Sophocles’ Trachiniae” in Brill’s Companion to the reception of Sophocles ed. Rosanna Lauriola and Kyriakos Demetriou (Leiden and Boston, 2017), 512-557.

Awards and Fellowships

• 2018 – January to March: visiting fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, London.
• 2015 – Winner of the Society for Classical Studies’ Collegiate Teaching Award
• August 2012-July 2015 – NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in Humanities
• 2011 – Winner of the UNC Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching
• 2006-7 – Ruth and Leon Feldman Professorship
• 2006 – Award for Outstanding Scholarly and Creative Achievement
• 2003 – Distinguished Teacher in Humanities Award, 2002-3