Nancy Sultan, Professor and Director of Greek and Roman Studies, joined the faculty in 1993. She has published and taught widely in the area of Hellenic Cultural Studies. Her interests include oral poetics (cross-cultural approaches), mythology & folklore, ethnomusicology, Aegean archaeology, modern Greek folk poetry, and gender studies. She has participated in archaeological excavations at Gournia and Mochlos on the island of Crete, and at the ancient site of Naukratis, Egypt. Her current scholarly project is an article about the influence of classical ideals on the Kennedy Administration.

Prof. Sultan is also a fiction writer. Her current project is a Young Adult novel about the building of the Parthenon from the viewpoint of a teenage apprentice stonemason. Her 10-minute play The Waiting Room, was produced by BFA student Adam Miller in April, 2006.

She has sailed the Nile, the Yangtze and the Wine-Dark Sea, ridden on donkeys, camels, and elephants, slept in a king's tomb, and survived several natural disasters.  Her students have followed her into the storage room of Christie's Auction House and into museums in NY, Boston, Chicago, and Champaign. When she's in a really good mood, she allows her children to beat her in Stratego.

Her motto is:  dum vivo, ludo 'As long as I live, I play'.

Select Publications:

" Should the 'Elgin Marbles' be Returned to Greece?" in History in Dispute, Vol. 20, ed. P. A. Miller & C. Platter. Manly Inc., 2005. 97-105.

"Music in Ancient Greece & Rome 1200 B.C.E.-476 C.E." in Ancient Greece and Rome volume in the series: Arts and Humanities Through the Eras, Gale Group, 2004. 181-232.

Exile and the Poetics of Loss in Greek Tradition.  Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1999.