Lillian Doherty

Lillian Doherty (LL21@umail.umd.edu) received her B.A. from Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Before coming to the University of Maryland, she taught at George Mason University and Howard University.  She has taught at Maryland since 1984, attaining the rank of Assistant Professor in 1987 and that of Associate Professor in 1993.

Professor Doherty has published a book and a number of articles on Homer. Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey was published by the University of Michigan Press in 1995.  It combines narratological, audience-oriented and feminist approaches to illuminate the gender dynamics of storytelling in the epic.  "Sirens, Muses and Female Narrators in the Odyssey" appeared in the 1995 collection The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey, edited by Beth Cohen (Oxford University Press.)  Other articles by Professor Doherty include "Joyce's Penelope and Homer's" (Classical and Modern Literature, 1990), "The Internal and Implied Audiences of Odyssey 11" (Arethusa, 1991), "Athena and Penelope as Foils for Odysseus in the Odyssey" (Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 1991), "Gender and Internal Audiences in the Odyssey" (American Journal of Philology, 1992), and "Tyro in Odyssey 11:  Closed and Open Readings" (Helios, 1992). Professor Doherty is also the American translator of Jacqueline de Romilly's Précis de littérature grecque (A Short History of Greek Literature,  University of Chicago Press, 1985).

Professor Doherty has taught a wide range of courses at Maryland, from elementary Greek and Latin to graduate-level Greek literature courses.  A favorite of hers is Classics 320, Women in Classical Antiquity.  She has also frequently taught Classics 170, Greek and Roman Mythology, and Classics 470, the advanced mythology course.

From her undergraduate days, Professor Doherty has been fluent in French; she spent her junior year in Paris, where she studied Homeric and biblical Greek as well as French language and literature.  In recent years she has acquired a competence in modern Greek (in preparation for a sabbatical trip to Greece in 1994).  She is an affiliate of the Women's Studies Program and of the Comparative Literature Program at Maryland.