Classical Studies Faculty Directory

Kendra Eshleman

Associate Professor

Photo of Kendra Eshleman

Kendra Eshleman

Ph.D.

Contact

Telephone: 617-552-3797

Email: kendra.eshleman@bc.edu

Courses

Advanced Latin and Greek seminars on Tacitus, Apuleius, Cicero, Livy, and Herodotus. Roman History, Roman Family Law, Ancient Medicine, Roman Religion.

Research Interests

The Second Sophistic and early Christianity, and the formation of identity among intellectuals in the first three centuries CE. 

Profile

Kendra Eshleman is a Roman historian with a special interest in the Second Sophistic and early Christianity. Her primary research area is the formation of identity among intellectuals in the first three centuries CE. Her first book, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire, examines the many ways in which being (who you are) was shaped by belonging (whom you know) for philosophers, sophists, and Christians in this period.

She teaches Latin and Greek at all levels, especially (but not exclusively) prose. In recent years, she has taught advanced seminars on Tacitus, Apuleius, Cicero, Homer, Thucydides, and Greek Rhetoric. She also regularly teaches Greek and Roman History, Roman Family Law, and Roman Religion.

Publications

  • “Response: Does the Performance Undercut the Substance?” In Medicine and the Law under the Roman Empire, eds. Michael Peachin and Claire Bubb: 147-55. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
  • “Sophists.” In Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography, ed. Koen De Temmerman: 335-48. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
  • “Indian Travel and Cultural Self-Location in the Life of Apollonius and the Acts of Thomas.” In Journeys in the Roman East: Imagined and Real, ed. Maren Niehoff, pp. 183-202. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 2017.
  • “Then Our Symposium Becomes a Grammar School”: Grammarians in Plutarch’s Table Talk.” Syllecta Classica 24 (2013): 145-71.
  • The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire: Sophists, Philosophers, and Christians. Cambridge University Press 2012.
  • "Becoming Heretical: Affection and Ideology in Recruitment to ‘Heretical’ Christianities.” Harvard Theological Review 104 (2011): 191-216.
  • "Defining the Circle of Sophists: Philostratus and the Construction of the Second Sophistic.” Classical Philology 103 (2008): 395-413.
  • “Affection and Affiliation: Social Networks and Conversion to Philosophy.” Classical Journal 103 (2007/08): 147-58.
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