All Scholars

TATUM, James Henry

  • James Henry Tatum
  • Date of Birth: December 3, 1942
  • Born City: Gregg
  • Born State/Country: TX
  • Parents: James Hilton, a geophysical engineer, & Emma Jean Harvey T.
  • Date of Death: February 6, 2026
  • Death City: Hanover
  • Death State/Country: NH
  • Married: William Noble, 2014
  • Education:

    Weatherford (TX) College, 1961; B.A. (English), U. of Texas, 1963; Princeton-DAAD Fellow, Heidelberg, 1967-8; Ph.D. (Classics), Princeton, 1969.

    “Thematic Aspects of the Tales in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses” (Princeton, 1969). 
  • Dissertation:

    “Thematic Aspects of the Tales in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses” (Princeton, 1969). 
  • Professional Experience:

    Asst. prof. to prof. classics, Dartmouth, 1969-81; chair, Dept. Classics, 1979-85, 2006-7; vis. prof. Hohns Hopkins, 1982; vis. prof. Classics, Johns Hopkins, 1982; Aaron Lawrence Prof. Classics, Dartmouth, 1984-2009; vis. prof.  Greek and Latin, U. of Michigan, 1998; Laurance S. Rockefeller vis. prof., University Center for Human Values, Princeton, 2003-4; Drew U. National Faculty, vis. prof., 2008; DAAD post-doc, Heidelberg, 1971; C. M. Loomis Memorial Lecturer, Oxford, 1973; junior fellow, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C., 1978-9; Huntington Award for Excellence in Teaching, Dartmouth, 1979; Guggenheim Fellow, 1985-6; NEH Conference Grant, Ancient Novels: Classical Paradigms and Modern Perspectives, 1988-90; 1994 Residency, Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy, 1994, 2006; fellow, Ligurian Study Center, Bogliasco, Italy, 2002, 2010; American Book Award, 2011 (for African American Writers and Classical Tradition).
  • Publications:

    Books:

    Apuleius and the Golden Ass (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1979); Plautus: The Darker Comedies (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1983); Xenophon's Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1989); The Ancient Novel: Classical Paradigms and Modern Perspectives, ed. with Gail M. Vernazza (Hanover, NH.: University Press of New England, 1990); The Search for the Ancient Novel (ed.) (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins U. Press., 1994); The Mourner’s Song: War and Remembrance from the Iliad to Vietnam (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2003; corrected paperback, 2004); African American Writers and Classical Tradition, with William W. Cook (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2010).

    Selected Articles:

    “The Muses of Jefferson,” Southwest Review 69 (1984) 228-45; “Apollonius of Rhodes and the Resourceless Hero of Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 22 (1986) 253-70; “The Iliad and Memories of War,” Yale Review 76 (1986) 15-31; “The Romanitas of Gore Vidal,” Raritan (1992) 99-122 (repr. in Gore Vidal: Writer against the Grain, Jay Parini, ed. Columbia [1992] 199-220); “Memory and the Study of Classical Antiquity,” with Jocelyn Penny Small, Helios 22 (1995) 149-77; “Memory in Recent Humanistic Research,” 151-5; “Aunt Elvie's Quilt on the Bed of Odysseus: The Role of Artifacts in Natural Memory,” 167-174; “Herodotus the Fabulist,” Der Antike Roman und Seine Mittelaterliche Rezeption, ed. M. Picone and B. Zimmerman (Zurich: Ascona, 1996), 29-48; “Memorials of the America War in Vietnam,” Critical Inquiry 22 (1996) 634-78; “Marcus Tullius The Search for the Ancient Novel, Author of the Metamorphoses,” Ancient NarrativeSupplementum 6: Lectiones Scrupulosae: Essays on the Text and Interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in Honour of Maaike Zimmerman, ed. W.H. Keulen, R.R. Nauta, and Stelios Panayotakis (Eelde: Barkhuis, 2006) 4-14. “Who’s Afraid of Andromeda?” Essays in Honour of B. P. Reardon, Ancient Narrative Supplementum (2010); “Auto-Obituary,” Southwest Review 95 (2010) 304-25; “Marina’s Inferno, Canto I,” Southampton Review 5 (2011) 48-51; “The Alexandrian Iliad,” Arion (2012) 163-77; “Mrs. Vergil’s Horrid Wars,” Arion (2013) 11-154; “A Real Short Introduction to Classical Reception Theory,” Arion, 22 (2014) 111-31.