Smith College Professor’s Studies Connect the Ancient World to Present Day

Assistant Professor Colin MacCormack’s fascination with classical languages began with a dead one. “I started with Latin, and liked it,” he says. 

But his scholarly pursuits didn’t end there.

“I was always broadly interested in myths, history, languages, fantasy, things like that,” MacCormack says. His interest in Latin led to his undergraduate degree, which led to his studies in ancient Greek, which led to his doctoral degree. “The snowball kept building momentum, and now here I am.”

An expert in classical languages and literature, MacCormack teaches Smith courses on topics ranging from tragedies and book-to-screen adaptations to the role of animals in stories from the ancient world. He describes his teaching and research as a fusion of two different theoretical approaches: posthumanism—the idea that humans are not the center of the universe, but are entwined with animals and nature—and pop culture.

His current book project, Encountering Animals in Roman Literature, is “meant to prompt thinking about the ways Greek and Latin authors, particularly in the first to third century CE, encounter animals on the page or in an arena, and how those encounters tie into systems of power,” says MacCormack.

“So much of the way we think about how we structure society is predicated on how we understand humans as differentiated from animals,” he adds. “But humans aren’t necessarily always the measure of all things. We don’t have to be the yardstick for everything all the time. [My research] is really about trying to deconstruct and unpack the assumptions and problems within [otherness] and other ways of being.”

So, where does pop culture fit into his scholarship?

MacCormack, a self-professed pop culture fan, is particularly interested in how what’s known and recorded about the past can be a product of one’s own creation, or viewed through a certain lens based on one’s life events and experiences.

“It’s interesting because there’s a tendency of just looking to history or antiquity purely as a model or a guide, but I think that’s kind of a misleading way to think about it,” he explains. “It offers a template, but we also bring meaning to the past, something different every time we look at it.”

MacCormack doesn’t just study pop culture. As co-host of the podcast Movies We Dig: Film, Antiquity & Everything in Between with friends Elijah Fleming and Christie Vogler, he helps listeners explore portrayals of the classics and the ancient world in film, television, and video games.

Since the podcast’s inception as a passion project in the early days of the pandemic, the Movies We Dig team has produced over 150 episodes discussing everything from the variety of iterations of The Mummy to a three-part episode about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. 

MacCormack and his co-podcasters have hosted academics, authors, artists, showrunners, and even an actor or two as special guests, and the podcast itself is part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and support collective that highlights marginalized voices typically left out of historical accounts and narratives.

A pop culture podcast might seem like an odd pursuit for a classicist, but according to MacCormack, “In some ways, it kind of opens doors. Truthfully, I think it helps me reach more people.”

When asked to name his favorite thing about teaching, MacCormack’s answer is as broad as the topics he researches. 

“I’m curious. I like seeing what students bring to different topics, whether it’s Homer or Euripides, and how that affects their encounter,” he says. “Students react differently to different texts than they did 10, 20 years ago, and I’m interested in the rise and fall of knowledge cultures.” 

Then, in true fandom fashion, he adds, “Plus, I just like hearing what they’re interested in, and to get recommendations from them.”