Elizabeth Keitel

Elizabeth Keitel studied Classics at Smith College and UNC Chapel Hill. After stints teaching at the College of Charleston and UC Santa Barbara she joined the Department of Classics as Assistant Professor in 1980, rising to Associate Professor and Professor. She retired in 2019.

During her years at UMass she distinguished herself as a scholar of Roman historiography, with a particular focus on the works of Tacitus. Of her many classic articles, some particularly influential ones include, “Principate and Civil War in the Annals of Tacitus” (AJP1984) and “The Non-Appearance of the Phoenix at Tacitus’ Annals 6.28” (AJP 1999). With these pieces, among others, Elizabeth played an important role in the development of methods for studying allusion and intertextuality in Roman historians.

Among her other works, she also authored a school commentary on Cicero’s Pro Caelio (Focus) with Jane Crawford and with UMass colleagues Brian Breed and Rex Wallace, co-edited Lucilius and Satire in Second-Century BC Rome (Cambridge). At the time of her retirement, a volume entitled Urban Disasters and the Roman Imagination, co-edited with Ginna Closs, was forthcoming.

Her service to the UMass Amherst Classics department and to the profession were exemplary. She was Department Chair for many years and Graduate Program Director for even more. She was President of the New England Classical Association and Vice President for Education of the American Philological Association.