Deborah Beck has won various awards for both teaching and research, including the 2021 Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics at the College and University Level from the Society for Classical Studies and a prize for Excellence in Faculty Teaching from the Gamma Sigma chapter of the national Classics undergraduate honors society Eta Sigma Phi (2019) and two Plumer Visiting Research Fellowships at St Anne’s College, Oxford (2017 and 2019). Her main research interest is ancient Greek and Roman epic poetry, especially Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. She is the author of two books on Homeric epic, Homeric Conversation (Harvard, 2005) and Speech Presentation in Homeric Epic (UT Austin, 2012), which has an accompanying open-access database (https://homeric-speech-beck.la.utexas.edu/home), as well as many articles on ancient Greek and Roman epic poetry. Her current book project, The Stories of Epic Similes in Greek and Roman Epic, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. She also publishes regular opinion pieces on both current events and higher education. These essays have appeared in newspapers around Texas and in national publications, including “Psychology Today” and “The Hill.” In her spare time, she enjoys classical music concerts, baking pecan pie made from home-grown nuts, reading mystery novels, and long walks around Austin.
Deborah Beck
