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Stephanie McCarter

@stephaniemccarter.bsky.social
1.4K followers 366 following 176 posts

Classics professor, writer, and translator (of Horace, Ovid, and Catullus, with more Ovid on the way). she/her stephaniemccarter.com

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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I'm pleased to announce a two-day virtual meeting (21-22 October) I've organized for EuGeSta, titled "Gender and Ovidian Translation: A Global Perspective." Papers will consider the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses into Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, and Norwegian.
Poster for EuGeStA virtual meeting, "Gender and Ovidian Translation: A Global Perspective," taking place on 21-22 October 2026. Sessions on both days begin at 10am Eastern. Further information in remainder of thread.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
It’s nice to have these in my hands! Publication day is Tuesday.
A book photo: the Poems of Catullus, A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text, edited by Stephanie McCarter.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
I'm not on here much, but I am so excited to share the cover of my forthcoming Catullus translation, featuring an amazing painting by Eduardo Mata Icasa (called "Nature of Emptiness"). As soon as I saw the painting, I knew no other work of art could more perfectly capture how I think about Catullus.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
I received the amazing news this morning that I have been named a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. I am still in disbelief, since it felt like even applying was an act of unwarranted audacity. (1/3) #guggfellows2025
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Zoom in on Monday, March 31 if you'd like to hear me discuss translating Latin poetry (including Horace, Ovid, and Catullus)!
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 10/09/2024
Publication day! I assembled my favorite Greco-Roman stories about women in power (Amazons, Dido, Boudicca, Cleopatra and many more), in both new and existing translations. You can find it (and see the TOC) here: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667325...
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 03/09/2024
This book has become one of my favorites. It’s a beautiful illustration of how books (and the libraries and databanks that house them!) bind us to each other through time—and translation is a key part of that process. Here’s a favorite passage:
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
I love my new book cover, a scratchboard illustration by Greek-American artist Evangelia Philippidis, depicting Amanirenas (left, in red), Dido (center, in blue, holding a calla lily), and Boudicca (right, in green, holding a sword), with Aristophanes' Assemblywomen in background. Out in September!
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 27/04/2024
I still have my slide to prove it!
Book covers of translations of Horace’s Odes by David Mulroy, David Slavitt, David Ferry, and  David West.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 14/04/2024
Happy to be giving the Morse Lecture this week at the University of Bristol's Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition. In-person and online! www.tickettailor.com/events/thein...
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 12/03/2024
Living and working on a campus in rural Tennessee has its challenges, but there are so many days, like today, when it's just gloriously beautiful. (Pic taken today on my walk to the post office, which is in the basement of the building shown.)
Building on the campus of the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, with leafless trees and daffodils in the foreground. The sun is bright and clear.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 01/02/2024
New book proofs! I'm so excited about this volume, which brings together many tales about mythological and historical women who ruled. Some are from existing translations, but most are newly done. (I loved translating the Assemblywomen in its entirety -- and lots more!)
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 31/01/2024
Latin poetry people, I have found it very helpful, while my students are trying to work out the rhythm of dactylic hexameter, to put up lines of Longfellow alongside lines in Latin with the same scansion.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
Excellent reading for today. And, as always with Nina MacLaughlin, lots of wonderful classical references.
A hand holding up the book Winter Solstice, by Nina MacLaughlin.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 29/11/2023
My cat Loki is excited that these Ovid paperbacks finally arrived!
A black cat propped behind a bunch of paperback copies of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by Stephanie McCarter.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 27/11/2023
Very excited to read this when it comes out in February!
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 27/11/2023
Looking forward to being a part of this on Saturday!
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
It's an amazing thing to learn that someone whose work you hold in the highest regard has praised your own. A world of thanks, @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social. From www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...
From The New Stateman's "Books of the Year 2023," Emily Wilson writes: "The best translation of a work of ancient literature that I read this year was Stephanie McCarter’s marvellous new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in fresh, readable, vivid iambic pentameter (Penguin Classics). McCarter captures Ovid’s wit and cleverness, making us laugh at the escapades of abusive, lust-crazed, arrogant gods and hapless, also lust-crazed and arrogant mortals. But she also brilliantly evokes Ovid’s more serious sides, including his attentiveness to power and the magical vivacity of the natural world. Her wonderful handling of metrical poetic form is a fitting match for Ovid’s artful, fluent Latin verse." She goes on also to recommend Barbara Kingsolver's "Demon Copperhead."
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 15/11/2023
OMG! Ann Patchett just plugged my book in a video for her bookstore (Parnassus Books). I now want to post this screenshot everywhere! I just finished “The Dutch House” (which I loved) two nights ago, so this is especially exciting at the moment.
A screenshot in which Ann Patchett holds up Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by Stephanie McCarter. She is in her bookstore, Parnassus Books, with a wall of bookshelves behind her.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 08/11/2023
This is part of a team-taught Humanities course (with colleagues from Art History and Religious Studies) on the Ancient Mediterranean, centered around the themes of gender, power, and the "other."
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 08/11/2023
I just had the best time taking students to an on-campus exhibition of work by Ming Ying Hong, as part of a unit on Ovid's Metamorphoses. A great way to think though Ovidian ideas of transformation, fragmentation, othering, the gaze, desire, disgust, objectification, and identity. Really moving!
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 01/11/2023
If you are interested in or working on translation and its intersections with adaptation, please submit an abstract for the 2025 SCS panel ("Translation and Creative Adaptation") organized by the Committee on the Translations of Classical Authors. Link: drive.google.com/file/d/14aCX...
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 23/10/2023
I just signed a contract with Penguin for a new translation of the Ars Amatoria! I might as well do all of Ovid, right? (I won't be starting it for a while since I need to finish Catullus first.)
Opening lines of the Ars Amatoria from a 9th c. manuscript (Bodleian Library MS. Auct. F. 4. 32).
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 16/10/2023
Enjoying spending this fall break day in deep thought about Homer's Iliad in preparation for my conversation this weekend with @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social at the Harrisburg Book Festival. Also very much hoping to see the conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen and Phuc Tran that immediately follows!
Three side-by-side images, one a headshot of Emily Wilson (with the Midtown Scholar Bookstore logo in the left bottom corner), in the middle an image of the cover of Wilson's Iliad translation, and on the right a headshot of Stephanie McCarter.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 15/10/2023
I don’t normally post about hobbies, but I am pretty proud of this table I refinished today, a 1962 Lane Acclaim that my kids had nearly destroyed. Before and after.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 14/10/2023
Awww. I also have a Loki!
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 21/09/2023
Flyer for my talk next week at my beloved alma mater.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 14/09/2023
One fave bit is when Medea tells the men-turned-pigs that their transformation is basically their own fault:
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 09/09/2023
I'm spending the morning working on a lecture (which I'll give next month at the Univ. of TN) on Elizabeth Colomba and Greco-Roman mythology, and it may be the most enjoyable writing I've ever done. She's just spectacularly brilliant. Currently obsessing over her painting of Danae:
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 06/09/2023
www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/b...
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 05/09/2023
This is making me have flashbacks to another Ovid textbook that lots of undergrads use, where this mindblowing comment (among others) can be found:
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 05/09/2023
Yes, very different! I'm having my students read it. A sample:
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 05/09/2023
I'll be giving another talk with Profs and Pints next week in Nashville. I love this gorgeous venue and the laidback atmosphere. Yay for giving talks in bars! profsandpints.ticketleap.com/cleopatra/
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 05/09/2023
Yes! muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl... It's one of a few things I've written now on how breasts/chests are rendered in translation and why it matters. A relevant bit:
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 27/08/2023
I’m not terribly fond of the rattlesnake that has just visited our driveway.
A rattlesnake crawling across a rock driveway.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 21/08/2023
Fantastic mail day!
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 18/08/2023
I'm currently in the thick of planning for the new semester and am getting renewed motivation from my amazing new Metamorphoses-inspired earrings. I love the "Ancient Epic" jewelry collection from Plato's Fire. (www.platosfire.co.uk).
Woman in a green shirt wearing a green earring in the shape of a book, with "Ovid's Metamorphoses" written on the cover.
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Stephanie McCarter @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social · 04/08/2023
New foster kitties! This little fellow is Loki; his brother Ronan is hiding in the back. They've since come out of hiding to play and purr quite a few times. I'm hoping we can socialize them and get them adoptable soon. :)
An 8-week old kitten with black fur cautiously standing in the open door of a carrying crate, with a bowl of food in front of it.
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