Jinyu LiuActing Betty Gage Holland Professor of Roman History

Jinyu Liu, Acting Betty Gage Holland Professor of Roman History (Ph.D. in Roman History, Columbia University, October 2004; M.Phil. in Ancient History, Columbia University, 2001; M. A. in History (graduated with distinction), Nanjing University, China, 1996; B.A. (graduated with distinction), History Department, Nanjing University, China, 1993). Roman History; Ancient Social and Economic History; Latin Epigraphy; Translation of Latin Literature into Chinese; History from below in the Roman Empire; Reception of (Western) Classical Antiquity in China.

Jinyu Liu was educated in China and the USA. She received her BA and MA in History from Nanjing University, China, and PhD in Roman History from Columbia University. Before joining the Department of History at Emory University as the Betty Gage Holland Chair of Roman History, she was a Professor of Classical Studies at DePauw University, where she served as the Department Chair in 2013-2016. She has also been a Distinguished Guest Professor at Shanghai Normal University since 2014.

Prof. Liu's research interests include social relations in Roman cities, the non-elite in the Roman Empire, Latin epigraphy, the reception of Graeco-Roman classics in China, as well as translating classical texts in a global context. She is the author of the monograph Collgia Centonariorum: The Guilds of Textile Dealers in the Roman West (Brill, 2009), and coedited (with Thomas R. Blanton IV and Agnes Choi), Taxation, Economy and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee, and Egypt (Routledge, 2022) and (with Thomas Sienkewicz), Ovid in China: Reception, Translation, and Comparison (Brill, 2022). Her book An Introductory Research Guide to Roman History (in Chinese) was first published by Peking University in 2014 and the second, expanded edition came out in 2021. She is editor of a two-volume book entitled New Frontiers of Research on Ovid in a Global Context (in Chinese; Peking University Press, 2021).  She was recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship (2011-2014) and a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship (2018-2019). She has been organizing the Guangqi Classics Lecture and Seminar Series in China since 2015, and has been the Principal Investigator of “Translating the Complete Corpus of Ovid into Chinese with Commentaries,” a multi-year project sponsored by a National Social Science Fund of China Major Grant.

Education

• Ph.D. in Roman History, Columbia University, October 2004.
• M.Phil. in Ancient History (oral exams on Hellenistic Period, High Empire, Late Antiquity, and Roman Numismatics; passed with distinction), Columbia University, 2001.
• M.A. in History (graduated with distinction), Nanjing University, China, 1996. 
• B.A. (graduated with distinction), History Department, Nanjing University, China, 1993.

Interests

• Roman History
• Ancient Social and Economic History
• Latin Epigraphy
• Translation of Latin Literature into Chinese
• History from below in the Roman Empire
• Reception of (Western) Classical Antiquity in China