Dr. Radcliffe Edmonds

Radcliffe Edmonds is the Paul Shorey Professor of Greek and Chair of the Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College. His research interests focus on Greek social and intellectual history, with a particular focus of mythology, magic, religion, and Platonic philosophy. He has published on Greek imaginings of death and afterlife, and on the discourse of magic in the ancient world. His current focus is on the afterlife, the history of myth interpretation, and the marginal categories of magic and Orphism within Greek religion. His most recent book, Drawing Down the Moon, is a study of the discourse of magic in the ancient Greco-Roman world, in which he surveys the different things labeled as ‘magic’, from curses and erotic spells to healing and divination, including such esoteric practices as astrology, theurgy, and alchemy. In addition to scholarship, he enjoys directing the Greek Plays on May Day and singing with the Bryn Mawr Renaissance Choir.