Vanessa B. Gorman

Associate Professor of History

Contact Information:

619 Oldfather Hall

Department of History
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68588, USA
Phone: (402) 472-3242
Fax: (402) 472-8839
E-mail:

Joined the Department:

August 1994

Originally from a small town in upstate New York, I trained as a general Classicist with a strong emphasis in history at the University of Pennsylvania under A. John Graham and Martin Ostwald. Though I have published in the past concerning Latin epic (Vergil, Lucan, the Ciris), my main grounding is in Archaic and Classical Greek history and philology. I have written a monograph tracing the archaic and classical development of the city of Miletos. Since then, I have been collaborating with my husband, Robert Gorman on Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature, a detailed study of luxury and decadence as characterized in Greek philosophical and historiographical traditions. We conclude that decadent luxury leading to destruction is not a Greek concept at all, but a Roman one, and that the Hellenistic historical fragments needs to be completely reedited along new historiographical methods that we have developed. The manuscript was submitted in January 2013.

Expertise:

• Ancient Greece
• Rome

Education:

Ph.D. in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, May 1993