Carol Atack
BSc (London), MA (Cantab), MPhil (Cantab), PhD (Cantab), FRHistS
College roles
Fellow (D)
Director of Studies in Classics Prelim; Part IA
Assistant Tutor (Undergraduates)
Postgraduate Mentor
Biography
Dr Carol Atack works on classical Greek political thought and intellectual history.
Dr Carol Atack is a Fellow D, director of studies in Classics and associate tutor at Newnham College, University of Cambridge.
Carol holds a PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge (2014), and undergraduate degrees in Classics (Cambridge) and Government (London School of Economics). She has held teaching positions in ancient history and classical literature at the University of Warwick and St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, and research positions in Classics at both Oxford and Cambridge. During Spring 2020 she held a fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington DC/Harvard.
Carol serves as associate editor for Greek political thought for the journal Polis, and for the book series Bloomsbury Ancient Politics.
Research Interests
Dr Carol Atack works on fourth-century BCE classical political thought. This year she has published books on two key figures from the period, Xenophon (Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics, Cambridge University Press) and Plato: a civic life (Reaktion Books). She has also published several articles and book chapters on topics in Greek political thought, including Plato’s model of history in the Laws, political thought in the pseudo-Platonic letters, Aristotle’s thought on kingship, and Foucault on Plato on frank speech.
Her PhD research on monarchy in Greek political thought has been published as The Discourse of Kingship in Classical Greece (Routledge, 2019). Her notes and introduction along with Martin Hammond’s new translation of Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Apology were published as Memories of Socrates (Oxford World’s Classics, 2023).
Carol’s current research continues her work on fourth-century Greek political thought, with a particular focus on the political and ethical thought of Plato and Xenophon. She is preparing a monograph on the temporality of Platonic dialogue, expanding on her 2020 article ‘Plato’s Queer Time: dialogic moments in the life and death of Socrates’ (Classical Reception Journal, 12, 10-31), and also continuing to work on parrhesia (frank speech) and gender in the context of classical Athenian democracy.