Shelley P. Haley is the Edward North Chair ofClassics and Professor ofAfricana Studies atHamilton College, New York, and (in 2021) President of theSociety for Classical Studies. She is an expert in applying Black feminist and critical race approaches to the study and teaching of Classics.
After graduating, she taught atLuther College (Decorah, Iowa) from 1977 until 1978, and subsequentlyHoward University (Washington, D.C.) from 1979 to 1985.[2] She was appointed to the faculty at Hamilton College in 1989.[4]
Haley employs Black feminist and critical race approaches to Classics,[7][8] and has worked on a wide range of topics including gender in the ancient world;[9] Latin, Greek, and comparative literature;[10][11][12] race in classical pedagogy;[13] and the role of African-American women (in particularFanny Jackson Coppin) in Classics.[14] She has described the difficulties of her early career and the process by which she became interested in race in the classical world through teaching students aboutCleopatra and researching 19th-century African-American classicists.[2]
Haley participated in theOxford Round Table in 2003;[15] she has served a four-year term as chief reader for the AP Latin Exam, and has chaired the AP Latin Exam Development Committee.[15]
Haley has also appeared as an expert on Roman History andCleopatra in the media includingTLC'sRome: Power and Glory (1999),[16]Timewatch'sIn Search of Cleopatra,[17] and Netflix'sAfrican Queens season 2 episode on Cleopatra.[18] Haley's assertion in the documentary that her grandmother told her that Cleopatra was black was criticized, though she also stated that "We don't know her exact racial heritage."[19][20] Despite her claims, theethnicity of Cleopatra has been well-studied through history and the consensus is that she was ofMacedonian Greek ancestry; the debates regarding her ethnicity haven't taken place in academic circles or sources,[21] being instead mentioned in entertainment and lifestyle magazines such asEbony; and an article aboutAfrocentrism from theSt. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1994 mentions the question, too, despite lacking evidence for the claim.[22]
Haley was a founding member of The Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Culture, and Society;[23] the Institute for Global African Studies (IGAS);[4] and the Multiculturalism, Race, and Ethnicity in Classics Consortium (MRECC). In September 2019, Haley was elected President of theSociety for Classical Studies for 2021, making her the Society's first African-American President.[24][25][26]
Haley has published and presented widely on Cleopatra, Black Feminist Pedagogy, and the impact of a classical education on African-American women. Recent examples of her work include:
"When I Enter: Disrupting the White, Heteronormative Narrative of Librarianship". Co-authored with Caitlin Pollock.Pushing the Margins: Women of Color and Intersectionality in LIS, eds. Rose L. Chou & Anna Pho. Sacramento: Litwin Books and Library Juice Press, 2018.[31]
"Re-presenting Reality: Provincial Women As Tools of Roman Social Reproduction". Women's Classical Caucus Panel, "Provincial Women in the Roman Imagination". American Philological Association, Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL., January 2–5, 2014.[32]
"Scientific Racism". Co-authored with Dr. Michele Paludi.Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, York, England: Springer Reference, December 2012.[33]
"Be Not Afraid of the Dark: Critical Race Theory and Classical Studies".Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies, eds. Laura Nasrallah and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, 4 Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2009: 27–50.[34][35]
"Lucian's 'Leaena and Clonarium': Voyeurism or a Challenge to Assumptions?".Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World, eds. Nancy S. Rabinowitz and Lisa Auanger, Austin, Texas: The University of Texas Press, 2002: 286–303.[36][37]
"Fanny Jackson Coppin'sReminiscences of a School Life and Hints on Teaching".African American Women Writers Series, 1910–1940, Volume 8, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York: G. K. Hall/Macmillan 1995.[citation needed]
"Self-definition, community and resistance: Euripides'Medea and Toni Morrison'sBeloved".Thamyris: mythmaking from past to present, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1995): 177–206.[38]
"Black Feminist Thought and Classics: Re-membering, Re-claiming, Re-empowering".Feminist Theory and the Classics, eds. byNancy Sorkin Rabinowitz &Amy Richlin, New York & Oxford: Routledge, 1993.[39][40]
"Livy, passion, and cultural stereotypes".Historia: Zeitschrift fur Alte Geschichte (1990): 375–381.[41]
"The Five Wives of Pompey the Great".Greece and Rome 32, no. 1 (1985): 49–59.[42]
"Archias, Theophanes, and Cicero: The Politics of thePro Archia".The Classical Bulletin 59, 1983: 1–4.[4]
^Shelley Haley, "Black Feminist Thought and Classics: Re-membering, Re-claiming, Re-empowering" inFeminist Theory and the Classics, eds. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz & Amy Richlin, New York & Oxford: Routledge, 1993.
^Shelley Haley "Be Not Afraid of the Dark: Critical Race Theory and Classical Studies," in Laura Nasrallah and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (eds.),Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies, 4 Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2009: 27–50
^Shelley Haley, "Gender in Ancient Egypt: A European or African Construction?" inDebating Complexity: Proceedings of the 26th Annual Chacmool Conference, the Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary, 1996.
^Shelley Haley, "Lucian's 'Leaena and Clonarium': Voyeurism or a Challenge to Assumptions?" inAmong Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World, edited by Nancy S. Rabinowitz and Lisa Auanger, Austin, Texas: The University of Texas Press, 2002: 286–303.
^Shelley Haley, "Self-definition, Community and Resistance: Euripides'Medea and Toni Morrison'sBeloved,Thamyris: Mythmaking from Past to Present 2.2 (Autumn 1995): 177–206.
^Shelley Haley, "Performing Race: A Critical Race Feminist Looks at Seneca 47." The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pa.: October 10–12, 2013.
^Shelley Haley, "Black Athena in the Context of America" (appearing under the editorially imposed title "Class pedagogy begs race questions"), American Classical League Newsletter, 16.1 (Fall 1993): 8–14.
^Shelley Haley,Fanny Jackson Coppin's, Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints On Teaching, Volume 8 of theAfrican American Women Writers Series, 1910–1940 (general editor: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,) New York: G. K. Hall/ Macmillan 1995.
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