Staff profile

I received my doctorate in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and took up positions at the American Academy in Rome and Indiana University, Bloomington, before coming to Durham in 2022. The focus of my research at present is my book project, which constitutes the first in-depth investigation of the reception of the Homeric Hymns in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes. I have also published articles and given talks on a wide array of topics in Greco-Roman literature, from Homer and Herodotus to Ovid and the Augustan mythographer Conon. Some of the throughlines that recur throughout my work include abiding interests in the development of myth and its deployment in service of particular literary aims; the representation of marginalized groups, including women as victims of sexual violence and those paradigmatic signifiers of Otherness, monsters; and questions of literary influence and allusivity, especially in the self-consciously learned poetry of the Alexandrians and their Roman followers.

• Hellenistic Poetry
• Epic
• Tragedy
• Gender and Sexuality
• Monster Studies
• Intertextuality, Narratology, and Reader-Response Theory

Chapter in book

• McPhee, B. D. Ethnography in the Past Tense: The Amazons in Apollonius' Argonautica. In C. Bloomfield-Gadêlha, & E. Hall (Eds.), Time, Tense and Genre in Ancient Greek Literature. Oxford University Press. Manuscript submitted for publication
• McPhee, B. D. (2022). All Brawn and No Brain? Mythopoetic Trajectories in Heracles' Monster Combat Myths. In T. Husøy, U. Furlan, & H. Bohun (Eds.), Narratives of Power in the Ancient World (107-153). Cambridge Scholars Press
• McPhee, B. D. (2021). Power Divine: Apollonius' Medea and the Goddesses of the Homeric Hymns. In J. Klooster, G. Wakker, R. Regtuit, & A. Harder (Eds.), Women and Power in Hellenistic Poetry (245-270). Peeters Publishers. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv28bqkm1.15

Journal Article

• McPhee, B. D. (online). The Conditionality of Helenus’ Oracle and Tragic Choice in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Mnemosyne: A Journal of Classical Studies, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568525x-bja10270
• McPhee, B. D. (2022). Off to Scythia: Apollonius Arg. 1, 307-311, and Ananius fr. 1 West
• McPhee, B. D. (2022). Orpheus’ Head at the Mouth of the Meles: Conon Narratives 45. Classical Philology: A Journal Devoted to Research in Classical Antiquity, 117(1), 209-219. https://doi.org/10.1086/717158
• McPhee, B. D. (2021). The Argo, Danaus, and Sesostris: On Allusions to Two First-Ship Traditions in Apollonius’s Argonautica. Yearbook of ancient Greek epic online, 5(1), 166-195. https://doi.org/10.1163/24688487-00501005
• McPhee, B. D. (2019). (Adhuc) Virgineusque Helicon: A Subtextual Rape in Ovid's Catalogue of Mountains (Met. 2.219). Classical Quarterly, 69(2), https://doi.org/10.1017/s0009838819000922
• McPhee, B. D. (2019). Erulus and the Moliones: An Iliadic Intertext in Aeneid 8.560-567. Harvard studies in classical philology, 110, 271-277
• McPhee, B. D. (2018). A Mad King in a Mad World: The Death of Cambyses in Herodotus. Histos, 12, 71-96
• McPhee, B. D. (2018). Mythological Innovations in Corinna's Asopides Poem (fr. 654.ii-iv PMG). Greek, Roman and Byzantine studies, 58(2), 198-222
• McPhee, B. D. (2018). Phineus' Perpetual Night: Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.2-4, and Apollonius, Argonautica 2.178-497. Hermathena, 195, 55-69
• McPhee, B. D. (2017). The Parentage of Rhodes in Pindar Olympian 7.13–14. https://doi.org/10.1086/691350
• McPhee, B. D. (2017). Numbers and Acrostics: Two Notes on Jason’s Prayer at Pagasae in Apollonius’ Argonautica. Akropolis (Podgorica. Online), 1, 111-120. https://doi.org/10.35296/jhs.v1i0.6
• McPhee, B. D. (2017). Apollo, Dionysus, and the Multivalent Birds of Euripides’ Ion. Classical World, 110(4), 475-489. https://doi.org/10.1353/clw.2017.0039
• McPhee, B. D. (2016). Walk, Don’t Run: Jesus’s Water Walking Is Unparalleled in Greco-Roman Mythology. Journal of Biblical Literature, 135(4), https://doi.org/10.1353/jbl.2016.0047