Danuta R. Shanzer
Professor of the Classics, Professor of Medieval Studies

Curriculum Vitae | Website | Past Courses

Office Hours | Monday 11am-noon & Thursday 1:30-2:30pm in 419A Main Library
Office | 3092E Foreign Languages Building, (217) 333-1009

I work in Latin Language and Literature, and am primarily a philologist and textual critic and literary historian. My area of expertise is the Later Roman Empire and Early Middle Ages (2nd to 7th C. A.D.) I also work in Later Roman and Early Medieval Social History. I have interests in Paleography, Vulgar Latin, Biblical Exegesis, Church History, and the Classical Tradition.

My work in progress includes articles on the Torino Fragments of Rutilius Namatianus (including an edition), Chilperic’s Verse (with edition), Orientius’ Eschatology, children’s souls in the afterlife, including abortivi, a literary contribution on Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy for the new Cambridge Companion to Boethius, ed. J. Marenbon, a chapter on “Augustine and the Latin Classics” for the Blackwell Companion to Augustine (ed. M. Vessey). Various reviews. A new critical edition of Avitus of Vienne’s Prose Opera (for the CSEL). A “bottom-up” study of the Goody thesis on the Church, marriage, permitted degrees of affinity, and inheritance in the Later Roman and early medieval period. A study of the development of the early medieval Christian ordeal by fire:  a classicist’s perspective. A commissioned collaborative translation and commentary (with R. Mathisen) of the Epistulae and Vita of Desiderius of Cahors and other 7th C. documents (for the TTH); co-edited conference proceedings:  Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World.