Erika Weiberg, Assistant Professor

Please note: Erika has left the "Classical Studies" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

Dr. Erika L. Weiberg researches and teaches Greek language and literature, with a focus on Greek poetry, gender and sexuality, and theory and reception. She received her PhD in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016 and taught at Florida State University from 2016 to 2020, when she joined the faculty at Duke.

Their first book, recently published by Oxford University Press, is titled Demanding Witness: Women and the Trauma of Homecoming in Greek Tragedy. [Use the code AUFLY30 for a 30% discount!] Demanding Witness investigates how the trauma of female characters is represented and received in four Greek tragedies about homecoming: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, and Euripides’ Heracles and Helen. Through discussions of modern trauma concepts alongside historical and literary analyses of these plays, this book examines how and why female characters’ expressions of psychological pain are hotly contested, silenced, and suppressed by other characters and sometimes by the plot of the play itself. By shifting focus to the returning hero’s wife and the women he enslaves, Demanding Witness calls attention to the detrimental effects of structural and chronic forms of trauma in addition to trauma caused by discrete, catastrophic events. This book argues that recognizing women’s trauma in these tragedies requires questioning how Greek society was organized through hierarchies that privilege the hero’s story of trauma and recovery to the exclusion of other types of stories and experiences.

In addition to multiple articles on Greek tragedy, Dr. Weiberg has also published on Ovid's Ars Amatoria, Anne Carson's translations of Euripides, and Sappho. Dr. Weiberg is also at work on a book manuscript that investigates how ancient Greek and Roman ideas of emotional trauma have influenced modern concepts of trauma, as well as how modern trauma concepts have conditioned contemporary understandings of ancient texts, from Homer and Greek tragedy to Galen. 

Curriculum Vitae

Contact Info:

Office Location:
Office Phone:	(919) 681-4292
Email Address:

Teaching (Fall 2025):

• GREEK 101.01, ELEMENTARY GREEK Synopsis

  Social Sciences 109, MWF 12:00 PM-12:50 PM

• GREEK 528.01, DRAMA Synopsis

  Languages 312, WF 03:05 PM-04:20 PM

• GREEK 551.01, ELEMENTARY GREEK FOR GRADS Synopsis

  Social Sciences 109, MWF 12:00 PM-12:50 PM

Office Hours:

Dr. Weiberg is on research leave for AY 2024-2025. If you have questions or would like to meet virtually, please contact them via email.

Education:

D.Phil.

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

2016

Keywords:

Gender History and Theory • History of sexuality • Psychic trauma in the theater • Theater--Greece

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Weiberg, EL, Demanding witness: Women and the trauma of homecoming in Greek Tragedy (February, 2024), pp. 1-225, ISBN 9780197747322 [doi]  [abs]
2. Weiberg, EL, ‘For you know how we cared for you’: Sappho and Queer Epistemology, in Believing Ancient Women: Feminist Epistemologies for Greece and Rome (January, 2023), pp. 30-47
3. Weiberg, EL, Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy. By Mario Telò. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2020. Pp. [ix] + 327., Classical Philology, vol. 117 no. 4 (October, 2022), pp. 753-758, University of Chicago Press [doi]
4. Weiberg, EL, FALSE REPORTS AND WAITING WIVES ON THE HOME FRONT IN AESCHYLUS’ AGAMEMNON AND SOPHOCLES’ TRACHINIAE, Classical Philology, vol. 117 no. 2 (April, 2022), pp. 282-302 [doi]  [abs]
5. Weiberg, EL, Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy, CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY, vol. 117 no. 4 (2022), pp. 753-758