People

Deborah Kamen (she/her/hers)

Portrait of Deborah Kamen

Deborah Kamen (she/her/hers)

Chair and Professor
Classics
dkamen@uw.edu
(206) 543-2526
Areas of Interest
Classics
Gender and Sexuality Studies

I am broadly interested in Greek cultural and social history, with a particular focus on slavery. My first book, Status in Classical Athens (Princeton University Press, 2013), maps a spectrum of ten social and legal statuses in classical Athens, questioning the ideology of three neatly defined status groups—slave, metic, and citizen—so commonly found in both ancient Greek literature and modern classical scholarship. My second book, Insults in Classical Athens (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), examines the range of insults in Athens from benign mockery to serious affronts. I have also written commentaries on Isaeus' Orations 2 and 6 (Bryn Mawr Commentaries 2000) and Pseudo-Demosthenes' Against Neaira (Dickinson Classical Commentaries, online 2018; print book 2021), as well as a number of articles on Roman slavery and sexuality. Most recently, I co-edited (with C. W. Marshall) a volume entitled Slavery and Sexuality in Classical Antiquity (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021). For many years I served as co-chair of the Lambda Classical Caucus, a coalition of LGBTQ Classicists and their allies affiliated with the Society for Classical Studies.

Selected Research

Research Advised: Undergraduate Senior Essays

Research Advised: Graduate Dissertations