Alexandra Leewon Schultz

Her current book project, The Mirage of Alexandria: A New History of Libraries in Greco-Roman Antiquity, argues that the modern understanding of ancient libraries is the product of over two millennia of mythmaking. By radically rewriting the history of libraries in Greco-Roman antiquity without a single great library at the center, and tracking down the origins of popular legends about the Library of Alexandria, I demonstrate how communities from classical antiquity to today have used libraries, and stories about libraries, to articulate their relationship to the past. Schultz has also written about local canons of Greek literature in the Hellenistic period; the participation and exploitation of enslaved persons in the history of Roman text collections; anecdotes about plundered libraries as a means of articulating elite Roman identity; and how a feminist and philological reading of Sappho's poetry reveals the poet's interest in women's agency.