Professor
M.A. (Oxford), M.A., M.Phil. (Columbia) D.Phil. (Oxford)

Teaching:

Undergraduate:

• Sex and Gender in Antiquity
• Democracy and Imperialism in Classical Greece
• Food and Drink in the Ancient Mediterranean
• Hellenistic World

postgraduate:

Recent research degrees supervised include:

• Sacred water in Greek religion (PhD)
• Function and functionality of the vase in Athenian society (MPhil/PhD)
• Boeotian Cults and Practices

Research:

Dr James Davidson works on Greek social and cultural history and historiography. He has written articles on Polybius, Greek public bars and Dido and child-sacrifice and is a regular contributor to The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. His first book, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens was published in 1997. He has just published The Greeks and Greek Love for Weidenfeld and is currently working on a translation of some Attic speeches for Penguin Classics.

He served on the Council for the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies from 2001 to 2004, and was a member of the Classical Association Journals Board 2000--2010.

Recent Publications:

• The Greeks and Greek Love: a Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007); recipient of the Mark Lynton History Prize 2010.
• ‘Revolutions in Human Time. Age-Class in Athens and the Greekness of Greek Revolutions’, in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, eds, Rethinking Revolutions through Ancient Greece (Cambridge University Press, 2006) 29–67
• ‘Making a Spectacle of Her(self). The Courtesan and the Art of the Present’, in M. Feldman and B. Gordon, eds, The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2006) 29–51
• 'Dover, Foucault and Greek Homosexuality: Penetration and the Truth of Sex' Past and Present 170 (2001), 3-51 - awarded the George Mosse Prize for outstanding contribution to gay and lesbian studies.