TATUM, James (Harvey) 1942-

PERSONAL:

Born December 3, 1942, in Longview, TX. Education: Attended Weatherford College, 1960-61; University of Texas at Austin, B.A. (English), 1963; Princeton University, M.A., 1967, Ph.D. (classics), 1969; attended University of Heidelberg, 1967-68.

ADDRESSES:

Home—724 Bragg Hill Rd., Norwich, VT 05055. Office—Dartmouth College, Classics Department, 6086 Reed Hall, Hanover, NH 03755-3506; fax: (603) 646-3353. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Asheville School, Asheville, NC, Latin master, 1964-65; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, preceptor, 1968-69; Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, assistant professor, 1969-75, associate professor, 1975-81, professor, 1981—, Aaron Lawrence professor of classics, 1984—, acting chair, 1978, chair of department, 1979-85, director of humanities, 1979-91. Visiting professor at Middlebury College, 1970, Johns Hopkins University, 1982, and University of Michigan, 1998. Member of selection committee for Mellon fellowships in humanistic studies, 1989-97, 1999-2000, and 2001—.

MEMBER:

American Philological Association (co-chair, committee on nominations, 1989-91; member, program committee, 1996-98), Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Woodrow Wilson fellow, Princeton University, 1963-64; American Numismatic Society summer fellow, 1966; DAAD postdoctoral summer grant, 1971; Dartmouth College junior faculty fellow, 1971-72; ACLS grant, International Conference on the Ancient Novel, 1976; junior fellow, Center for Hellenic Studies, 1978-79; J. Kenneth Huntington Award for Excellence in Teaching, Dartmouth College, 1979; IREX travel grant, 1981; honorary M.A., Dartmouth College, 1981; Dartmouth College senior faculty fellow, 1983-84; Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow, 1985-86; National Endowment for the Humanities conference grant, 1988-90; IREX grant, 1989; Dartmouth College senior faculty fellow, 1993-94; resident, Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center, 1994; fellow, Ligurian Study Center, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Apuleius and the Golden Ass, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1979.

Plautus: The Darker Comedies, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1983.

Xenophon's Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1989.

(Editor) The School of Cyrus: William Barker's Translation of Xenophon's Education of Cyrus (London, 1567), Garland (New York, NY), 1987.

(Editor, with Gail M. Vernazza) The Ancient Novel: Classical Paradigms and Modern Perspectives, University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 1990.

(Editor) The Search for the Ancient Novel, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1994.

The Mourner's Song: War and Remembrance from the Iliad to Vietnam, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2003.

Contributor to books, including Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome, edited by T. J. Luce, Scribner (New York, NY), 1982, and Complete Roman Drama in Translation. Plautus: The Comedies, Volume II, edited by David R. Slavitt and Palmer Bovie, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1995. Contributor to scholarly journals, including American Journal of Philology, Milton Studies, and Critical Inquiry. Member of editorial board, Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Carroll Moulton, Scribner (New York, NY), 1998.

SIDELIGHTS:

James Tatum, a professor of classics at Dartmouth College, is the author and editor of such works as Xenophon's Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus, The Search for the Ancient Novel, and The Mourner's Song: War and Remembrance from the Iliad to Vietnam. In Xenophon's Imperial Fiction, Tatum examines the Cyropaedia of Xenophon, an ancient text that was once used to educate princes. In History, Thomas Kelly noted that Tatum "seeks to place the work, the original novel, in the context of literary history and theory, while elucidating it for the modern reader." Philip A. Stadter, reviewing Xenophon's Imperial Fiction in the American Journal of Philology, stated that "This is a rewarding book: the reader constantly discovers new insights and approaches to Xenophon and to classical fiction."

Tatum served as editor for The Search for the Ancient Novel, a selection of papers presented at an international conference on the ancient novel held at Dartmouth College. "On the whole," remarked Richard Hunter in Classical Review, "the book succeeds in its avowed aim of being 'comprehensive … in our desire to represent the many ways it is possible to engage with ancient fiction.'" Choice contributor J. A. Farrell, Jr., observed of Tatum's editorship that "The scholarly standard maintained throughout the collection is very high."

The Mourner's Song is an "eloquent and moving study of the memorialisation of death in war, showing how the forms and processes of art convert mourning into memorial," according to a reviewer in History Today. In the work Tatum reflects on physical monuments, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, as well as literary tributes, such as Homer's Iliad. In the Bryn Mawr Classical Review Jonathan Shay called The Mourner's Song "a well-integrated and wonderfully written set of reflections on the role of poetic, architectural, and visual arts in the remembrance of war dead."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Philology, winter, 1989, Philip A. Stadter, Xenophon's Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus, pp. 665-668.

Choice, December, 1979, review of Apuleius and the Golden Ass, p. 1300; June, 1989, P. M. Green, review of Xenophon's Imperial Fiction, p. 1676; October, 1994, J. M. Farrell, Jr., The Search for the Ancient Novel, pp. 277-278.

Classical Philology, April, 1991, Tomas Hagg, review of Xenophon's Imperial Fiction, pp. 147-152.

Classical Review, Volume 40, number 2, Rosemary Stevenson, "Fiction in Xenophon," pp. 229-231; Volume 45, number 1, Richard Hunter, "The Novel," pp. 55-57.

Greece & Rome, April, 1990, N. Hopkinson, review of Xenophon's Imperial Fiction, pp. 103.

History, spring, 1990, Thomas Kelly, review of Apuleius and the Golden Ass, pp. 131-132.

History Today, May, 2003, review of The Mourner's Song: War and Remembrance from the Iliad to Vietnam, p. 90.

Library Journal, March 15, 2003, Edwin B. Burgess, review of The Mourner's Song, p. 98.

Mnemosyne, spring, 1992, Helen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, review of Xenophon's Imperial Fiction, pp. 102-109.

Religious Studies Review, April, 1995, William K. Freiert, review of The Search for the Ancient Novel, p. 132.

Times Higher Education Supplement, June 13, 2003, Thomas Palaima, "Achilles and His Awful Power Are Never Far Away," p. 28.

Times Literary Supplement, April 15, 1994, Mary Beard, "Greek Love," p. 7; August 22, 2003, Armand D'Angour, "Of Menelaus, Maya Lin, and My Lai," p. 23.

ONLINE

Bryn Mawr Classical Review Web site,http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/ (April 24, 2004), Ellen Finkelpearl, review of The Search for the Ancient Novel; Jonathan Shay, review of The Mourner's Song.

Dartmouth College Web site,http://www.dartmouth.edu/ (April 24, 2004), "James Tatum."

University of Chicago Press Online,http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (April 24, 2004), "James Tatum."*