Professor Christopher Whitton

Christopher is an Official Fellow, Director of Studies in Classics, and the Deputy Praelector (responsible for the presentation of students for their degrees) at the College. He is Professor of Latin Literature in the University's Department of Classics.

Biography

As an undergraduate Christopher read Classics at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was also the Organ Student. After a year as Kennedy Scholar at Harvard, he returned to St John’s for graduate work in Classics, focusing on the works of Tacitus and Pliny the Younger. He has been a Fellow at Emmanuel since 2007, teaching in the Faculty of Classics. At the College, besides teaching Greek and Latin, he has served as Director of Music (2007–2022) and for shorter stints as Praelector, Acting Tutor and Acting Graduate Tutor. In 2012–14 he had two years as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin and Rostock University. Christopher grew up in Lancaster, and was lucky to attend a state grammar school there with a superb group of Classics teachers. He was equally lucky to follow that with two years as a sixth–form scholar at Eton. Outside academia his main pleasures are modern languages, travel and his two children.

Teaching

As Emmanuel's Director of Studies in Classics, Christopher arranges the programme of teaching for our undergraduate students in Classics. He teaches Latin literature for all years, and usually some Greek and/or Latin language. His role at the University's Faculty of Classics involves giving lectures and classes to undergraduates, supervising postgraduate students, serving as an Examiner, and various administrative responsibilities. In his College teaching, University lecturing and as a MPhil and PhD supervisor, he covers a range of Latin authors and topics, with a focus on early imperial prose (e.g. Seneca, Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius).

Research

Christopher works on Latin literature of the early Roman Empire, especially Pliny the Younger and Tacitus, with particular interests in prose style, intertextuality and the intersection of literature and history. Currently his main projects are a Cambridge 'green and yellow' commentary on Tacitus Annals 14 and a monograph on Pliny/Tacitus intertextuality. His publications include a commentary on Pliny Epistles 2 (2013), The Arts of Imitation in Latin Prose (2019), and three edited volumes, most recently the Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature, coedited with Roy Gibson (2024). He is a series editor of the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics ('green and yellows').