Classical Studies Faculty Directory

Tom Sapsford

Assistant Professor

Photo of Tom Sapsford

Tom Sapsford

Ph.D.

Contact

Stokes Hall South 277

Email: thomas.sapsford@bc.edu

ORCID 0000-0001-5308-5245

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Southern California

Profile

Tom Sapsford studies performance, gender, and sexuality in both the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and their later receptions. 

His first book, Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Men in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures, explored a figure called the kinaidos/cinaedus, known in antiquity for his outrageous gender performance and sexuality. Sapsford’s current book project, Classics and the Gay Counterculture, looks at how a group of writers, artists, and activists from the 1950s onward used Greco-Roman culture in their work when facing criminalization, liberation in the wake of the Stonewall riots, the AIDS epidemic, and its aftermath.

Publications

  • "Under the Great Mother’s Sway: An Excursion through Martial Book Three." Classical Journal, (2026) 121.3: 363–94.
  • "William S. Burroughs and the ancient historians." Classical Receptions Journal, (2025) 17.3: 203–19.
  • "Queer Musicality in Classical Texts." In E. Haselswerdt, S. Lindheim, and K. Ormand (eds.), The Routledge Handbook to Queer Theory and Classical Studies. Routledge, (2024) 123–37.
  • "Cleomachus: A Study in 'Cinaedic' Associations." In T. Gazzarri and J. Weiner (eds.), Searching for the Cinaedus in Ancient Rome. Brill, (2023) 67–85.
  • Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Men in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures. Oxford University Press, (2022).
  • "Epic Poetry into Contemporary Choreography: Two Twenty-First-Century Dance Adaptations of the Odyssey." In F. Macintosh, J. McConnell, S. Harrison, and C. Kenward (eds.), Epic Performances, from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century. Oxford University Press, (2018) 194–208.
  • "The Erotics of Hybridity: Transgender Representation in Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann." Spectator, (2017) 37.2: 21–9.
  • "The Wages of Effeminacy? Kinaidoi in Greek Documentary Sources from Egypt." EuGeStA, (2015) 5: 103–23.

Courses

Sapsford teaches advanced language seminars on imperial Latin authors such as Vergil, Juvenal, Martial, and Seneca. His intermediate Latin course uses ancient writings on the gladiatorial arena (the Passion of Perpetua, excerpts from Seneca and Martial, and a selection of Latin inscriptions) to introduce students to reading un-adapted Latin texts.

In addition, he teaches “The Chorus, Ancient and Modern,” which looks at group performance from the Athenian tragic stage to the digital age; “Greco-Roman Egypt,” which explores the cultures of Egypt under the rule of the Ptolemies and Caesars; and “Everyday Aphrodite,” which examines the importance of ancient sexuality on modern understandings of self.

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