Golder, Herbert 1952- (Herbert Alan Golder)

PERSONAL:

Born October 29, 1952, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Mervyn Maurice (retired paper executive) and Ruth Gertrude Golder. Ethnicity: "Caucasian/Jewish." Education: Boston University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1975; Yale University, M.A., 1977, M.Phil., 1979, Ph.D., 1984; attended Oxford University, 1982. Politics: Independent. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Martial arts.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Boston, MA. Office—621 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215; fax 617-353-5905. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Yale University, New Haven, CT, instructor in classics, 1977-80; Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, assistant professor of classics, 1982-85; Emory University, Atlanta, GA, visiting assistant professor, 1984-85, assistant professor of classics, 1985-87; Boston University, Boston, MA, assistant professor of classics, 1988-93, associate professor, 1993-2004, professor of classics, 2004—. Oxford University, senior visitor at Manchester College and visiting scholar at New College, both 1987-88; Wayne State University, Thomas L. Conklin Memorial Lecturer, 1996; Syracuse University, B.G. Rudolf Lecturer in Judaic Studies, 2003; lecturer at other colleges and universities, including Harvard University, State University of New York at Albany, Johns Hopkins University, University of Florida, University of California at San Diego, Irvine, and Los Angeles, and Brown University. Redlog Pictures, principal, 1999—; Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, assistant director or archival researcher for several films director by Herzog; guest filmmaker at Telluride Film Festival, 1997 and 1999, Harvard Film Archive, 1998 and 1999, and Vermont International Film Founda- tion and Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute, both 1999. Appeared as commentator for an episode of the cable television series Mysteries of the Ancient World, broadcast by Arts and Entertainment, 1996; guest on television programs in the United States and abroad. Sidewalks of New York Productions, Inc., consultant, 1984-85; Cambridge Film and Television Foundation, member of academic advisory board, 1988-91; Coolidge Corner Theater Foundation, member of advisory board, 1993-99; New York Greek Drama Company, member of advisory board, 1995—.

MEMBER:

Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, American Literary Translators Association, Modern Language Association of America, Council of Editors of Learned Journals, American Philological Association, Phi Beta Kappa (Epsilon of Massachusetts chapter).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Ford Foundation grant, 1986-87; Phoenix Award for significant editorial achievement, Council of Editors of Learned Journals, 1992, for Arion: Journal of Humanities and the Classics; International Scholarly Outreach Prize, American Philological Association, 2004.

WRITINGS:

The Bacchae (television play), broadcast by BBC-2 (England), 1989.

(Translator and author of introduction and notes) Friedrich Nietzsche, Unmodern Observations, edited by William Arrowsmith, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1990.

(Translator, with Richard Pevear, and author of introduction and notes) Sophocles, Aias (Ajax), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(Translator and author of introduction) Euripides, Bacchae, Applause Books (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Werner Herzog; and assistant director) Invincible (screenplay), 2002.

Author of stage adaptations of the works of Sophocles and Euripides, performed at Boston University, Emory University, and Stanford University. General editor, with William Arrowsmith, of the book series "The Greek Tragedy in New Translations," Oxford University Press, 1985-96. Contributor to books, including Advances in Nonverbal Communication: Sociocultural, Clinical, Esthetic, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Fernando Poyatos, John Benjamins (Philadelphia, PA), 1992.

Contributor to periodicals, including Pequod: Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism, Translation: Journal of Literary Translation, and Literary Imagination. Editor in chief, Arion: Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 1990—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Herbert Golder once told CA: "I was drawn at an early age, by way of the stage, to the Greek classics and started translating Greek classical drama for performance. This seemed naturally to lead me to film, first writing films and then making them, since film is our own most powerful form of seeing in darkness. Were Sophocles alive today, he would, I am quite sure, be making films."

"My work tends to explore man at the extreme limits of his condition, because it is there, under extreme pressure, that he reveals, like a chemical compound, his essential elements. Greek tragedy brought this truth home to me more nakedly than anything else, and so I have spent much of my life there, reading it, translating it, teaching it, studying it. The evolution to film was a natural consequence of being a student of the Greeks but coming to consciousness in the twentieth century. If Sophocles were alive today, he would, I have no doubt, have been a filmmaker, working in our own most powerful myth-making mode, a medium that is, like Greek tragedy, in its essence, a light stabbing through darkness."