Dr. Norman B. Sandridge
(Assistant Professor of Classics)
Office: Locke Hall 464
Phone: (202) 806-6747
E-mail: normansandridge@gmail.com

Education
Ph.D. Classics
- University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill

M.A. Greek
- University of North Carolina — Chapel Hil

M.A. Latin
- Florida State Universit

B.S. Physics (minor: Mathematics)
- University of Alabama — Huntsville.

Interests
Greek Epic, Greek Tragedy, the Emotions, Hellenistic Poetry

Curriculum Vitae
During my first three years in high school I wanted nothing more than to join the Atlanta Braves’ starting pitching rotation, along with John Smoltz, Steve Avery, and Tom Glavine. When, by my senior year, it became clear that my low-eighties fastball/knuckleball combination was not going to be sufficient even to attend a good college program, I decided to make physics my life’s pursuit. I was fascinated by the implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity and the quantum revolution of the early part of the 20th century. I wanted to know where the universe came from and where it was going. I loved math and science and believed that literature, by contrast, was too subjective, formless, and intuitive to matter much in the “real” world. I also thought it would be cool to be the first astronaut on Mars (I have always been plagued by delusions of grandeur), so I decided to attend the University of Alabama at Huntsville, where I majored in physics and math. Thus began my long, strange trip into the study of Classics.

In my sophomore year at Huntsville, I wandered into a Latin class taught by the inspired and inspiring Richard Gerberding. My prior knowledge of the Greco-Roman world consisted of a smattering of Aristotle in high school and sundry Sunday school lessons on how the Romans fed Christians to the gladiators, or something like that. I knew that Latin was the source of many English words for law and science, and at the time I was only interested in the origins of these words (an interest that would later translate into a fascination with the metaphorical approach to cognition by George Lakoff. After taking Latin, and being required to memorize the first eight lines of Vergil’s Aeneid, I became interested in the ancient origins of just about everything: ethics, government, poetry, physics, mathematics, architecture. I reveled in the rigors of grammar and obsessed over the careful structure of Latin poetry (I could marvel at a single Latin sentence for hours).

One of the first ancient works I read was Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which I bought for two and a half dollars at a flea market in Marietta, Georgia. I was amazed by Aristotle’s understanding of the emotions— pity, fear, anger, envy— and their role in how we convince others to see the world as we see it. With my passion for Aristotle kindled and some understanding of the Latin subjunctive, I took undergraduate courses in ancient Greek philosophy (from Brian Martine) and ancient political science (from John Pottenger), and continued to read Horace, Ovid, and Catullus on my own. I was, and still am, interested in what a hero was to the Greeks and Romans, so I read Vergil’s Aeneid and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey— and I read Sophocles’ Antigone a bunch of times. I was also intrigued by the fact that many ancient philosophers had already posed the major ethical questions that we still ponder today. I became so attached to the Loeb edition of Seneca’s Epistulae Morales that I refused to return it to the library and had to pay a $60 fine (not a very ethical or wise decision, I know, since I could have easily purchased the book for under $20).

By the time I graduated from UAH with a B.S. in physics, I was convinced that a Classics career was in my future. One of my professors had dubbed me a “born-again Classicist” and I wore this title with pride. I thus enrolled in the Master’s Program at Florida State University, hoping to become a specialist in either Vergil’s Aeneid or Ovid’s Metamorphoses. While attempting to do so, I took a great many excellent courses from Hans Mueller (Latin Prose Composition, Tacitus, Valerius Maximus— yes, Valerius Maximus), Jeff Tatum (Horace, History of Roman Republic), and Leon Golden (Greek Comedy [esp. “Dark” Comedy], Homer, Plato). I left Florida State with an M.A. in Latin and the strong conviction that Roman poetry was to be my “thing,” as the young people say.

For the culmination of my professional training in Classics, I arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where, after taking a course from William Race on the Greek tragic playwright, Sophocles, I promptly switched my interests to Greek tragedy and returned to my original interest in Greek philosophy and Homer, which I studied under Peter Smith. On top of these inspiring courses, I had the great honor and pleasure to read Livy and Cicero with Jerzy Linderski, to perform Roman comedy and Euripidean tragedy for Kenneth Reckford, and to study Greek rhetoric under the masterful tutelage of Cecil Wooten. After writing my Master’s thesis at UNC on three plays in Sophocles (Ajax, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus), I began preparation for my doctoral dissertation on the heroism of Jason (the Jason from ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and Medea and the Golden Fleece) in the third-century epic poem, the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes. In my dissertation I studied Jason’s character in terms of his leadership, which, I argued, is characterized by piety, prudence, and a concern for maintaining concord among his other heroic comrades.

Having graduated from UNC in 2005, I have composed an article on the nature of self-regarding pity in three plays of Sophocles (Ajax, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus). I am also exploring further aspects of Apollonius’ Argonautica, for example, the nature of harmony or concord, the correspondence between the Jason and Medea story in Apollonius and Euripides, and the reception of the Homeric epics in the Hellenistic period. In general, I am continuing to pursue the original questions I brought to the study of Classics as an undergraduate; questions that are inexhaustible: what is the nature of the good life? how attainable is happiness? what is the nature of beauty? what is tragedy? what is comedy? what is the best within us?

Outside of the Classics (nothing is outside of the Classics, really), I am learning the guitar, studying domestic architecture, running long distances, and eating competitively (just kidding about the last one). I am always eager to chat with students and to learn about what they find interesting about the world. Please feel free contact me in my office (202-806-6747), by e-mail (normansandridge@gmail.com), or simply drop by Locke Hall, Room 464, for a visit!