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Sarah Iles Johnston

Sarah Iles Johnston

Sarah Iles Johnston

Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor of Religion

johnston.2@osu.edu

(614) 292-2058

414 University Hall
230 North Oval Mall
Columbus, OH
43210

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Areas of Expertise

  • Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean
  • Myth
  • Archaic Greek Poetry

Education

  • Ph.D., Cornell, 1987
  • M.A., Cornell, 1983
  • B.A., Classics, University Kansas, 1980
  • B.S., Journalism, University Kansas 1979

Personal Statement

"It is only by a somewhat severe mental effort that we realize the fact that there were no gods at all, that what we have to investigate are not so many actual facts and existences but only conceptions of the human mind that conceived them."
Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena

"There is no greater bar to the understanding of mythology than our modern habit of clear analytical thought."
Jane Ellen Harrison, Delphika

These two quotations from one of the foundational figures for the study of ancient religions begin to sketch where those of us who continue in the field must stand--poised precariously between trying to think ourselves back into the ancient mind-set (if that's even possible) and yet resisting the lure of some of its more attractive and culturally familiar aspects.

I am currently working on a book on Greek myth, which use approaches from serial narratology and cognitive science to better understand the ways in which Greek myths, in the polished forms through which they were delivered to Greek audiences, created and sustained religious beliefs.

Books

 

Ritual Texts 2nd edition

  

Ancient Greek Divination

  

Restless Dead

  

Hekate Soteira

Edited Volumes

 

Ancient Religions

  

Mantike Studies in Ancient Divination. Religions in the Greco-Roman World

  

Religions of the Ancient World

  

Medea

Guest Editor, Helios 21.2 (1994) (theme: ancient literature and the supernatural).

Recent Articles

”The Greek Mythic Story World,” forthcoming in Arethusa 48.3 (2015)

"Narrating Myths: Story and Belief in Ancient Greece,” Arethusa 48.2 (2015) 169-215.

"Myth in the Getty Hexameters,” in The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic and Mystery in Ancient Selious, eds. C. Faraone and D. Obbink (Oxford 2013) 121-56.