James Zainaldin

Assistant Professor in Classical and Mediterranean Studies

James Zainaldin is Assistant Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. His work centers broadly on the scientific, technical, and philosophical traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, usually with a focus on Latin prose texts of the Roman Empire. He also works on comparative Greco-Roman/Chinese studies and the reception of the Western Classics in modern China and has a secondary appointment in the Department of Asian Studies. As a student of the Chinese tradition, Zainaldin 翟牧泗 continues to study classical and Mandarin Chinese.

Zainaldin has published numerous articles and peer-reviewed book chapters on Greek and Roman science and philosophy, Latin literature, and Greco-Roman/Chinese comparative studies (overview and links here). His first book, Gargilius Martialis: The Agricultural Fragments, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. Besides establishing a new critical Latin text of the extant agricultural writings of this 3rd-century north-African Roman author Gargilius Martialis, the book offers a comprehensive study of Gargilius’ writings, demonstrating their importance for our understanding of the development of the Latin language and of ancient scientific and technical thought and literature. His second book, The artes and the Emergence of a Scientific Culture in the Early Roman Empire, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2025. It offers the first full-scale, synthetic account of the Latin technical treatises called artes—including architecture, agriculture, land-surveying, medicine, and the art of war—and argues that their flourishing in the early Roman Empire represents the emergence and development of a uniquely Roman scientific culture.

Zainaldin has three further book projects underway:

• A book on Seneca the Younger’s Consolation to Marcia, co-written with Prof. Jonathan Master (Emory University) and under contract with Cambridge University Press for the series Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, that sets Seneca’s work into its manifold ancient contexts—historical, philosophical, linguistic, literary, and cultural—and presents a new argument for its enduring significance.
• A translation of Seneca the Younger’s Consolation to Marcia, also co-written with Jonathan Master and under contract with Princeton University Press for the series Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers, that will make Seneca’s work comprehensible and urgent to a public audience.
• A book, in progress, that introduces, sets into global context, and offers a new argument for the significance of the Greek and Roman consolatory tradition from Homer to Augustine, with a particular focus on the philosophical tradition.

In his teaching, Zainaldin enjoys introducing students to topics which are central to his own interests and remain of enduring relevance today. At Vanderbilt he regularly teaches courses on Greek and Roman science (“Ancient Science,” CLAS 2300) and medicine (“Ancient Medicine and Its Legacy,” CLAS 1140), Greek and Latin at all levels, and in the Vanderbilt core sequence (“Science, Technology, and Values,” CORE 1020). Zainaldin is always excited to meet with and support students working in the humanities as well as those majoring in STEM disciplines who have interests in history, philosophy, and more. He is also interested to meet with students with comparative interests, whether Greco-Roman/Chinese or otherwise.