Rate My Professor Georgia Irby

Georgia L. Irby is the Class of 1961 Professor of Classical Studies at the College of William and Mary, where she has been a faculty member since 2003. She earned her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Georgia and her Ph.D. in Classical Philology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Previously known as Georgia Irby-Massie, she served as chair of the Department of Classical Studies and holds leadership positions in professional organizations, including past president of the Southern Section of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. Irby currently serves as editor of the Classical Journal, the premier peer-reviewed journal of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Her research interests span the history of Greek and Roman science, including cartography, geography, hydrology, ancient environment, mythology, Greek and Latin pedagogy, and the representation of classical themes in modern literature and popular culture.

Irby has co-authored a Latin textbook, A New Latin Primer (Oxford University Press, 2015), with Mary C. English. She edited the Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists (Routledge, 2008) and A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). Her monographs include Epic Echoes in The Wind in the Willows (Routledge, 2021), which examines Homeric influences in Kenneth Grahame's work; Conceptions of the Watery World in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Bloomsbury, 2021); and Using and Conquering the Watery World in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Bloomsbury, 2021), developed from her COLL 100 course "Why Water Matters," exploring water in ancient physics, infrastructure like aqueducts, medicine, mythology, and religion. She has published on Greek mythology, Roman military religion, Roman military medicine, sea monsters, and environmental history. Currently, she is preparing a translation and commentary on Pomponius Mela's De Chorographia, supported by the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship. In 2025, Irby was awarded the Class of 1961 Professorship to advance her monograph on sea monsters across cultures and to develop new courses. Her pedagogy integrates student contributions, enhancing both teaching and scholarship.