Interview with Victoria Wohl
Professor Victoria Wohl has had a busy year! In August 2025, her 2023 Sather Lectures were published with the University of California Press as The Poetry of Being and the Prose of the World in Early Greek Philosophy. In November, she was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her research was also recognized with a Dean’s Research Excellence Award from the UofT. We talk to her about her research, her recent conference on water, and the role of Classics in the world today.
Tell me about your latest book project.
My most recent work is a literary reading of the fragments of five Presocratic philosophers: Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras. Really, it’s a very simple gambit, which is to think about the ways that their stylistic choices support or complicate the philosophical content. There is quite a lot of serious philosophical work on these authors, but not a lot on the stylistic or literary side. Part of my initial goal was just to expand the corpus of the texts we literary scholars have available, because they really are amazing pieces of literature! Heraclitus, for example, is as rich in metaphor and as symbolically dense as poets like Aeschylus and Pindar. In general, I’m thinking about what their specific tropes and stylistic quirks do to advance the philosophy or the ways they pull against it.
How do you imagine these poets and philosophers acting in their societies? What do you think they look like as people?
It is difficult because of our limited knowledge of the historical context, but sometimes you can tell from reading the works themselves. Empedocles, for instance, is clearly reciting his poetry publicly. The persona he presents is very much “Here I am—I’m a god,” as everyone comes to him for cures and prophecies. All of this plays into the larger question of what it means to be a philosopher at this moment in time. Some people prefer to call Empedocles a type of shaman: is he a healer, a poet, a philosopher? I think to a certain extent, these questions are thematized in their own texts, although in different terms from our own – these thinkers didn’t label themselves “philosophers.”
It strikes me that you have taken what people in our field might consider a somewhat esoteric topic, this highly poetic philosophy, and found a way to have conversations with other disciplines and the wider public. Could you tell me more about your work on elementality and the Elemental Readings conference series? How did that come about?
That was a project I didn’t think I was going to write on myself because a book on the elements in Greek philosophy would be so huge. But it was designed to connect a lot of people from different discourses. The project came about because Alex Purves at UCLA wanted to do a conference on air and I was working on the Presocratics, so we started talking about how we could coordinate something larger. The series started with an air conference in Los Angeles and then the water conference was here in Toronto. The idea was that each institution would have its own organizers and focus. For the water conference in Toronto, I was working with James Cahill, a colleague in Cinema Studies. The latest event in December was a little follow-up to last year’s Water conference: we invited artists, indigenous leaders, and a scholar of landscape architecture, among others, to talk about their work with water.
What are the plans for the earth and fire conference?
Earth will be at Cornell in April. The hope is that we will hold the fire conference somewhere with a volcano! Java, Hawaii, or maybe Vesuvius or Etna.
How was the experience at the Royal Society of Canada? What was the event like?
It was really fun! The experience was also humbling. Over 100 fellows were appointed this year, 25 of whom were from Arts and Humanities. When they held the induction ceremony, they introduced the scientists like “So-and-so invented an artificial lung that saved thousands of lives,”—big and life-changing things. But kudos to the Royal Society and Canada for maintaining a central role for Humanities. Everyone I talked with did fascinating work. In general, people were also quite interested in what we do as Classicists. There was a doctor at my table working on Alzheimer’s and memory research and we ended up having a conversation about ancient thoughts on psychology and whether it was comparable to how we think about cognition today. I’m very honoured to be inducted.
What do you think the role of Classics is in modern society? Why do you think they still reserve honors for work like ours?
Humanities can be a hard sell. Sitting on funding committees, I can see why it can be difficult when one person is proposing new research on splitting the atom versus a person giving a new reading of a poem. But among other things, Classicists are custodians of the ancient texts and languages, keeping them alive by showing their relevance to modern readers. I feel very fortunate to be teaching at a time when our undergraduate language courses are thriving. We have more Latin majors than we’ve had before—classes are packed!
What advice would you have for someone interested in Classics who is maybe looking to go further, whether they are an undergraduate student or have a personal interest?
Learn the ancient languages! (laughs) No really, read ancient literature in whatever form you can—translations are great too. Go down all the rabbit holes, follow all the paths. If you love the literature, learn the languages. If you love the history, pursue that. If you want insight into daily life, go on a dig. There are so many different paths in Classics, and no single one is right. I feel like it’s the people who zig-zag who will find the most interesting things. So, I guess my advice is to think broadly and boldly.