Benjamin S. Haller
Professor of Classics
Chair of Foreign Languages and Classics
Degrees Held
B.A., The College of William and Mary
M.A., M.L.I.S., Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Office Location: 107 Birdsong Hall, Bray Village
Phone: 757-233-8811
Email: bhaller@vwu.edu
Department/s:
- Classical Studies
Benjamin Haller has been at 好色先生tv since 2008, having taught previously at the University of Pittsburgh, the College of William and Mary, and Lawrence University. He received tenure in 2013, and promotion to Full in 2025, and is Coordinator of the Classics Program and Chair of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Classics.
Since arriving at VWU, he has begun the VWU Classics Department Lecture Series, which has hosted luminaries like Kurt Raaflaub (Brown University), Stanley Lombardo (University of Kansas), Bill Hutton (The College of William and Mary), Adam Potkay (The College of William and Mary), Alex Mann (The Smithsonian), Carl Rubino (Hamilton); Erik Neil (Director, Chrysler Museum), and many more; obtained permission from the national chapter to begin our own Iota Mu chapter of Eta Sigma Phi, the National Honorary Society for Greek and Latin; successfully taught significant overloads every semester to provide classes for two major programs and two minors; authored and kept current an assessment plan (CDAP 2018, available ) and Self Study for the Classics Department, available ; and handled all departmental assessment for Classics.
Dr. Haller has published on topics ranging from Homer to Lucian of Samosata: his scholarly areas include Homer and Archaic Greek poetry; the Classics in popular culture; and the influence of a classical education on early American thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe, and Francis Daniel Pastorius; Latin pedagogy; and the classics in African American literature. He is a firm believer in the importance of a humanistic education to living a principled, reflective, and responsible life.
He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and regularly presents his scholarship at regional and national professional organizations such as CAAS, CAMWS, and SCS; he has also served on a range of committees, including as Co-Chair of the Educational Programs Committee, as Faculty Secretary (Fall 2012-Spring 2013; and again starting in Fall 2018), and as a member of Faculty Standards and Welfare, the Academic Excellence and Experiential Learning subcommittees of Strategic Planning (2013-2014), the INTEL Committee, Academic Effectiveness Committee, and the Faculty Mentoring Advisory Committee.
Dr. Haller also serves as Area Chair for the Classical Representations in Popular Culture panel of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association and is a member of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South's Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (appointment ends 2025), the Society for Classical Studies Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities Committee, and the Liberal Arts Chairs Committee of the SCS. He has also been active with a number of human rights-related groups such as the campus Homeless Shelter, Amnesty International, and the Tidewater area LGBT "Reel it Out" film series.
During his time at VWU, he has taught every class offered in the Classics Department, and proposed a number of new courses, and written a new Latin textbook for our Latin program, titled Laetabere! To read selections from his student evaluations of teaching, see .
His hero is his great grandfather Harry William Mann, who spent his life as a Pennsylvania Dutch carpenter, first learning English when he attended a one-room schoolhouse, but who somehow still managed to read voraciously in German and English, write poetry, serve in the infantry during World War I, and build homes for himself and for his children.
Of late, Dr. Haller is uniting his avocation and his vocation by attempting to read some world's great children's books to his son Keats William Haller and his daughter Abigail Helen Kaye Haller.
When he is not reading to Keats and Abigail, he is working on his recent Latin textbook based upon Apuleius, Laetabere!, his book on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo titled Apollonian Aspirations and a God of Peisistratean Precocity: Ionian Identity, the Apatouria, and Samian and Peisistratid Self-Promotion in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, for which he received a Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies research fellowship in the summer of 2024, and his book on Ralph Ellison's use of Homer, titled Homer and All that Jazz: Odysseus and the Aoidos in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Early Twentieth Century African American Arts in New York, for which he received a Mednick in 2020.
Books
Haller, Benjamin. [2027]. "Laetabere! An Introduction to Latin through Apuleius." Volume 1 of this book was completed and used as the primary textbook for the LATN 111-112 sequence this year. I plan to field test the book for several years to adjust pacing and presentation before publishing it with a publisher.
Haller, Benjamin. 2024. Greco-Roman Literature and Culture in the Imagination of Virginia's Tidewater Region, 1607-1826: The Empire of the Mind. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Edited Volumes
Day, Kirsten, and Benjamin Haller, co-editors. 2014. "魏伪位峤肝 峒谓胃蟻蠅蟺委谓慰蠀 尾委慰蠀 魏维蟿慰蟺蟿蟻慰谓": Popular Culture as a Paedagogical Lens on Greco-Roman Antiquity. Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy. 1(1). http://journaldialogue.org/issues/issue-1/
Book Chapters
Haller, Benjamin. 2026. "George Sandys." The Oxford History of Poetry in English, Volume 10: American Poetry: First English Encounters to the U. S. Civil War, edited by Max C. Cavitch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming.
Haller, Benjamin. 2026. "Landscape." In Trends in Classics-Greek and Roman Humanities Encyclopedia, edited by Silvio Friedrich B盲r. Berlin: De Gruyter. Forthcoming.
Haller, Benjamin. Forthcoming. "Book 10." Oxford Critical Guide to the Odyssey. Edited by Joel Christensen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Forthcoming in early 2026)
Haller, Benjamin. 2025. "Intreat them Gently, Trayne them to that Ayre: George Sandys's Savage Verses and Civilized Commentary at Jamestown." In A Companion to the Translation of Classical Epic. Edited by Richard H. Armstrong and Aleandra Lianeri. Oxford: Blackwell.
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
Haller, Benjamin. 2021. "Justice, Revenge, and Unexpected Theodicy in Lars von Trier's Dogville and Euripides' Medea." Arethusa 54:221-267.
Day, Kirsten and Benjamin Haller. 2014. "魏伪位峤肝 峒谓胃蟻蠅蟺委谓慰蠀 尾委慰蠀 魏维蟿慰蟺蟿蟻慰谓:" Popular Culture as a Pedagogical Lens on Greco-Roman Antiquity. Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy 1(1).
Haller, Benjamin. 2014. "Homeric Parody, the Isle of the Blessed, and the Nature of Paideia in Lucian's Verae Historiae." In The Ancient Novel and the Frontiers of Genre: Supplementum to Ancient Narrative (Transactions of the International Conference on the Ancient Novel In Lisbon, Portugal, July 2008).
-. 2014. "The Labyrinth of Memory: Iphigeneia, Simonides, and the Classical Models of Architecture as Mind in Chris Nolan's Inception (2010)." Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy. 1(1). http://journaldialogue.org/issues/issue-1/
-. 2013. "Dolios in Odyssey 4 and 24: Penelope's Plotting and Alternative Versions of Odysseus's 谓蠈蟽蟿慰蟼." Transactions of the American Philological Association 143.2: 263-92.
-. 2009. "The Gates of Horn and Ivory in Odyssey 19: Penelope's Call for Deeds, Not Words." Classical Philology 104: 397-417.
Encyclopedia Articles
2011 "Doulichion." In Blackwell Homer Encyclopedia, ed. Margalit Finkelberg. Oxford: Blackwell.
2011 "Echinades." In Blackwell Homer Encyclopedia, ed. Margalit Finkelberg. Oxford: Blackwell.
2011 "Geography." In Blackwell Homer Encyclopedia, ed. Margalit Finkelberg. Oxford: Blackwell.
2011 "Ionian Islands." In Blackwell Homer Encyclopedia, ed. Margalit Finkelberg. Oxford: Blackwell.
2011 "Ithaca." In Blackwell Homer Encyclopedia, ed. Margalit Finkelberg. Oxford: Blackwell.
2011 "Landscape." In Blackwell Homer Encyclopedia, ed. Margalit Finkelberg. Oxford: Blackwell.
2011 "Zakynthos." In Blackwell Homer Encyclopedia, ed. Margalit Finkelberg. Oxford: Blackwell.
2009 "Antigone." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Michael Gagarin. New York: Oxford University Press.
2009 "Narcissus." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Michael Gagarin. New York: Oxford University Press.
2009 "Pandora." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Michael Gagarin. New York: Oxford University Press.
2009 "Pygmalion." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Michael Gagarin. New York: Oxford University Press.
Peer-Reviewed (not Anonymously) Online Articles
2012 "Horace I.22." Ann Raia, Judith Lynn Sebasta, and Barbara F. McManus: Online Companion to "The Worlds of Roman Women,"the online companion to Ann Raia, Cecelia Luschnig, and Judith Lynn Sebasta, The Worlds of Roman Women: A Reader (Newburyport, MA: Focus).
Literary Publications
2019 "Kyklikoi Logoi" (Poems). Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and Classics. Published by Boston University, and including Anne Carson on its Editorial Board. Arion has published original poem by Seamus Heaney and other major world-class poets.
Popular Publications
2011 "The Good Epicurean: What the Poet Horace Can Teach Us About the Beauty of Simplicity in a Complex Modern World." VWC Magazine, 2011: pp. 36-37.
Reviews
2015 Review of, Powell (B.B.) (trans.) Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The Essential Books. Pp. xx + 511, ills, maps. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
2015 Review of, Powell (B.B.) (trans.) Homer: the Odyssey. Pp. xxii + 459, ills, maps. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Books in Progress
Homer and All that Jazz: Odysseus and the Aoidos in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Early Twentieth Century African American Arts in New York. (Mednick Fellowship, 2020)
Apollonian Aspirations and a God of Peisistratean Precocity: Ionian Identity, the Apatouria, and Samian and Peisistratid Self-Promotion in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (Center for Hellenic Studies Summer Fellowship 2024)
Recent Conference Presentations
2025 "Then Came the Amazon, the Daughter of Great-Souled Ares, the Slayer of Men": Patty Jenkins's "Wonder Woman" and the Classical Greek Amazon." Friday, February 21, 2025, at the annual meeting of SWPACA in Albuquerque, NM.
2024 "Hermes, Apollo, and the Apatouria: Peisistratus, Polycrates, and the Fashioning of Athens as Ionian Metropolis in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Washington, D.C. Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies Fellows Talk July 22, 2024.
2024 "Back to the Roman New Comedy?: Marty McFly and the Servus Callidus and Adulescens in Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future," SWPACA Summer Salon, Thursday June 20, 2024, 8:30 a.m. Mountain Time.
2023 "Citizens Forged in Flame and Song: The Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the Apatouria, and the Peisistratids" Presented Thursday, March 30, 2023 at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South.
2023 "峒愇 蟽蟺苇蟽蟽喂 纬位伪蠁蠀蟻慰峥栂兾: The Odyssey Cyclops-Narrative and the Children in the Audience." Presented the 11:30 a.m. Classical Representations in Popular Culture panel at the February 23, 2023 meeting of SWPACA.
2023 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 "峒勎轿聪佄 渭慰喂 峒斘滴轿轿迪蔚, 渭慰峥ξ赶兾, 伪峒蠈蟻伪蟿慰谓? Invisible Man, the Odyssey, and Ralph Ellison's 'Basement Studio'" and Federal Writers Project Interviews" Presented remotely at the hybrid Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies on Saturday, January 7, 2023.
2022 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 "峒勎轿聪佄 渭慰喂 峒斘轿轿迪蔚, 渭慰峥ο兾, 峒蠈蟻伪蟿慰谓? Ralph Ellison and the Influence of Homer's Odyssey on the Form of Invisible Man and on its Representation of Orality." Presented at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Winston-Salem, NC, on Friday, March 25 (1:15 p.m.).
2021 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 "Orpheus and Orfeu: Marcel Camus' Eastertide Pagan Temporale." Delivered Friday, February 26, 2021 in the Classical Representations area at the remote meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association.
2020-21 "Your Friendly Neighborhood Cultural Relativist Cyclops: Antifa, Marx, and Other Straw Men of Contemporary American Hate Groups." Originally scheduled to be presented at the panel entitled "E Pluribus Unum," March 2020, in Birmingham, AL, and actually presented at the rescheduled remote CAMWS meeting on April 7, 2021. Annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South.
2020 "Your Friendly Neighborhood Cultural Relativist Cyclops: Antifa, Marx, and Other Straw Men of Contemporary American Hate Groups." Presented March 2020 at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Birmingham, AL. (POSTPONED TO NEXT YEAR DUE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC).
2020 "Childe Asimov's Pilgrimage: Freedom, Fate, and Byronic Outlaw Heroes in 'The Stars Like Dust.'" Benjamin Haller, Thursday, 2/20 at the annual meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association in Albuquerque, NM.
2019 "The Surprise Endings of Lars Von Trier's 2003 Dogville and Euripides's Medea: Teaching an Unexpected Theodicy in the Modern Mythology Classroom," February 22, 2019 at the annual meeting of the Classical Representations in Popular Culture at the 2019 meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association in Albuquerque, NM.
2018 "'Intreat them Gently, Trayne them to that Ayre:' George Sandys's Savage Verses and Civilized Commentary at Jamestown," Classical Association of Virginia Fall Meeting, September 29, Charlottesville, VA.
2018 "The Metamorphoses of George Sandys: Ovid Commentary as Self-Making in Virginia's Jamestown Colony," at the 114th annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 12, 2018, 8:30 a.m.
2018 "Classical Counterfactuals: George Sandys's 1632 Metamorphoses Commentary and "Good Newes from Virginia"," February, 2018, The Annual Meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, Albuquerque, NM.
2017 ""New England Trout and Midas in the Shadow of Monument Mountain: The Yankee Reception of Classical Mythology in Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonder Book," at the Southwestern Popular/American Culture Association meeting in Albuquerque, NM on Saturday, February 18, 8:00 a.m.
2016 "Nick Tosches, Monty Python, and the Genre of Self-Deconstructing Christian Pseudepigrapha" at the Southwestern Popular/American Culture Association meeting in Albuquerque, NM on Wednesday, February 10 at 1:15 p.m.
2015 "Classical Themes in Chris Nolan's Inception," an invited lecture delivered at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, on Thursday, February 5, 2015.
2015 "Shattering the Walls of Dystopia: Humanistic Heroism in Snowpiercer and the Cena Trimalchionis." Presented in the Classical Representations in Popular Culture panels of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Annual Meeting in Tucson, Arizona on Friday, February 13, 2015.
2014 "From Hexameter to Hekatompedon." Presented at the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Waco, TX, Friday, April 4, 2014.
2014 "Songs of Innocence and Experience: Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom." Presented Saturday, February 22, 2014 in theClassical Representations of Popular Culture Area at the Annual Meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
2014 "Advice for Job Candidates at Small Liberal Arts Schools." Remarks at a Round Table for Academic Job-Seekers presented Friday, February 21, 2014 at the Annual Meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
2013 "Myth, Architecture, and Memory: Chris Nolan's Inception and the myths of Ariadne and Iphigeneia." Presented at the International Popular Culture Association in Warsaw, Poland on July 24, 2013.
2013 Respondent to Ed Floyd's Paper ""Textual variants in the Odyssey as background for understanding the composition of theIliad." University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center Presentation. Provisional date, March 26, 2013.
2011 "Dum conderet... Germanopolim?! Whittier's Pius Pennsylvania Pilgrim Pastorius and Vergilian Rhetoric in the Ktisis Legend of Germantown, Pennsylvania." Reception Panel, Classical Association of the Atlantic States Annual Meeting at Baltimore, MD. October 15, 2011.
2011 "Myth, Architecture, and Memory: Chris Nolan's Inception and the myths of Ariadne and Iphigeneia." A talk presented at Classical Representations in Popular Culture panel April 20, at the PCA/ACA and Southwest Texas Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Joint Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
2010 "More than a Mere Suasoria: Lucian's Phalaris." Greek Literature Panel, The Classical Association of the Atlantic States Annual Meeting in Newark, New Jersey.
2009 "Lucian's Phalaris: Defining Proper Uses of Paideia for Emperors and Sophists." Presented in absentia at the Col贸quio Internacional do Gipsa: Luciano e a tradi莽茫o luci芒nica, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, April 13-17, 2009.
2008 "Homeric Parody, the Isle of the Blessed, and the Nature of Paideia in Lucian's Verae Historiae." International Conference on the Ancient Novel in Lisbon, Portugal, July 21-26, 2008.
2008 "Duplicitous Dolios? Conditioning Audience Response to Deceit through Two Kinds of Deception in the Back Story of theOdyssey." Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Tucson, Arizona, April 16-18, 2008.
2007 "渭喂谓 伪峤愊勏屛 versus 渭喂谓 伪峤愊勧慷喂: What is Athena hiding at Odyssey 13.190?" Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 13, 2007.
2005 "Penelope's Fidelity and the Bed in Odyssey 23." Fall Meeting of CAAS, Wilmington, DE, October 7, 2005.
2005 "The Gates of Horn and Ivory in Odyssey 19: Penelope's Preference for Erga over Logoi." Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Madison, Wisconsin, March 31, 2005.