Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Classics
Columbia University
1990

Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.)

Columbia University
1986

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Columbia University
1984

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

State University of New York, College at Purchase
1984

Classics

Modernism, 1870-1945 (Literary and Cultural)

Crime Fiction and 20th Century 'Noir'

American Literature

Modernist Art

Rhetoric (Ancient and Modern)

Ancient Philosophy

Ancient Homicide Law

Humanities I & II

Major Authors

20th Century Crime Fiction

Postwar 'Noir' in Literature and Film

Chair, Department of Classics (2017-2021)

Provost's Distinguished Service Award, Jan. 2021

COAS Award for Outstanding Service (for Interdisciplinary Studies Dept.), May 2017

HU Merit Awards for Sustained Superior Performance (various years)

Dike Phonou

Dike Phonou: The Right of Prosecution and Attic Homicide Procedure

The normal means of seeking redress in Athenian law was through a dike, which the victim brought to the appropriate magistrate, who then conducted the case through the various stages of the Athenian legal process, an initial inquiry, possibly a public arbitration, and finally a trial before a democratic court. What distinguishes homicide from almost every other offense, however, is precisely that its victim cannot seek legal redress because he is dead. So who does? 

This short book is devoted to the single aim of supporting the “traditional view” that it was only the members of the victim’s family who had the right to seek this redress through a suit for murder (dike phonou). In a wider-ranging book (almost as short as this one, Athenian Homicide Law in the Age of the Orators), Douglas MacDowell argued in 1963 against that restrictive interpretation: though Athenian law enjoined the relatives (or in the case of a slave, the owner) of the victim to prosecute, it did not order others not to. Others have since followed MacDowell’s lead. Tulin relies on three disparate pieces of evidence, to each of which he devotes one chapter: Drakon’s Code and Plato’s Euthyphro.

Articles

On the Refutation of Polemarchus: Analysis and Dialectic in Republic I

This paper contains a detailed examination of an important passage in Republic Book I, and seeks to demonstrate that analysis (as opposed to synthesis) originated in Plato’s use of dialectic. This paper then demonstrates, to the extent that demonstration in such matters is attainable, that Republic I was from the outset conceived as a prologue to the dialogue as a whole, and that it was not itself an independent dialogue tacked on to the rest at a later stage.  In both cases the claim is made that the proofs advanced are more or less definitive.

Please Remind Me of Anamnesis: A Double-Entendre in Plato’s Phaedo

Slave Witnesses in Antiphon V.48

A Note on Euripides’ Bacchae 39-42

Xenophanes Fr. 18 D.-K. and the Origins of the Idea of Progress

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

Participant in ACLS Conference on Recently Tenured Faculty in the Humanities (April 2001). "Homicide and the Sociology of the Ancient Family.”

Lecture presented by invitation to the ‘Program in Research Investigations’ at St. Mary’s College. [PRISM], July 23, 1997

"Dike Phonou: Attic Homicide Procedure and the Problem of Plato’s Euthyphro.” (Paper presented by invitation to the ‘Workshop-Conference on Reason and Religion in Fifth-Century Greece,’ Univ. of Texas, Austin. Respondent: M. Gagarin. Sept. 21, 1996)

Moderator for a panel discussion on Ancient History (The Classical Association of the Atlantic States [CAAS], Dickinson College, May 1994)

"Plato and Socrates" (Howard University, Humanities Div. Faculty Workshop, Aug. 1993)

"Platonic Self-Examination and the Allegory of the Cave." (Guest Lecturer for the Howard University, Division of Humanities’ NEH sponsored seminar, June 1992)

"Euthyphro's Homicide Case." (APA, Chicago, Dec. 1991)

"Euthyphro's Homicide Case." (Paper presented to the George Washington Univ. Seminar on Ancient Mediterranean Cultures. Respondent: P.Wakefield. Dec. 11, 1991)

"Xenophanes Fr. 18 DK, and the Origin of the Idea of Progress." (The Classical Association of the Atlantic States [CAAS], Fordham University, Sept. 1991)

"Catullus 1 and the Hellenistic Origins of Neoteric Poetry." (Providence College, Feb. 1991)

Respondent to J. H. Lesher: "Xenophanes' Fr. 18 as 'Faith in Progress'." (GWU Seminar on Ancient Mediterranean Cultures, Oct. 1990)

"Stoicism and the Doctrine of Life According to Nature." (Contemporary Civilization Faculty presentation, Columbia Univ., Oct. 1989.)

"The Bible and the Hellenic Roots of the Western Tradition." (Contemporary Civilization Faculty Initiation, Columbia Univ., Sept. 1988.)