Joseph R. O’Neill is scholar of Greek and Roman literature, culture, and history. In Barrett’s signature course, the Human Event, Joseph uses a range of art and literature from across cultures in different eras to investigate, among other things, the ways in which human societies develop strategies for processing trauma, the centrality of language and culture to the formation and maintenance of personal and social identities, and the species and limits of human knowledge. He teaches a number of courses on aspects of Greek and Roman civilization, especially Greek and Latin literature in all its variety. He also teaches the Greek and Latin languages at all levels. He has recently taught courses on gender and sexuality in the Greek and Roman worlds; the ways in which war, trauma, and political violence are both commemorated and systematically forgotten in ancient Mediterranean societies; women in Rome; Greek and Roman medicine; and the Roman emperor Nero and discourses of tyranny. He also teaches race and antiquity, having recently led a seminar on the ‘whitewashing of Ancient Greece and Rome.”
Joseph is the founding director of Barrett’s Theatre of Difference Project. In the spring of 2021, he directed a staged reading of Euripides’ “Medea” and facilitated a community-based discussion on what the ancient play can contribute to contemporary discourses on intersectional difference.
Joseph is also affiliated with the newly formed certificate program Veterans, Service and Society, and has developed one of the program’s core courses, a seminar on representations of veterans and service in literature and the arts.
Joseph's research is focused on Roman literature and culture, in particular, the complex relationship between the performance of social scripts (e.g., Roman law and legalism) and literary production.
With Barrett colleague Dr. Adam Rigoni, Joseph is co-editing a volume of essays on contemporary, multicultural, interdisciplinary deployments of Vergil’s Aeneid, a project largely inspired by his work in veterans studies. The book is under contract with Routledge and slated for publication in late 2021.