Kelly Shannon-Henderson

Kelly Shannon-Henderson's research focuses on prose literature, both Greek and Latin, of the Imperial period, particularly the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Her monograph, Religion and Memory in Tacitus’ Annals, examines religious material in the Annals using cultural memory theory; it is the recipient of the 2020 Goodwin Award of Merit from the Society for Classical Studies (that organization’s highest scholarly award). She is also the author of a critical edition, translation, and commentary on the Imperial Greek paradoxographer Phlegon of Tralles published with Brill in Fragmente der griechischen Historiker part IV, and has co-edited (with Dr. Salvador Bartera) the forthcoming Oxford Critical Guide to Tacitus. Her current major project is a commentary on fragmentary Greek historian Heraclides of Pontus, under contract with Brill for the Fragmente der griechischen Historiker series.
A full CV is available.

Monograph

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2019) Religion and Memory in Tacitus’ Annals. Oxford University Press. Winner, 2020 Goodwin Award of Merit (Society for Classical Studies.

Book

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. “1667. Phlegon of Tralleis.” Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Part IV E: Paradoxography and Antiquities, Fascicle 2: Paradoxographers of the Imperial Period and Undated Authors [Nos. 1667-1693], ed. Stefan Schorn. Brill, 9-338. [Completed with support from 2016-17 Loeb Fellowship.]

Oxford Critical Guide to Tacitus, co-edited with Salvador Bartera (Oxford University Press). 

Book Chapter

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2021) “What Makes a Divus? The Rhetoric of Prospective Deification in Pliny’s Panegyricus,” Rhetoric and Religion in Ancient Greece and Rome (Trends in Classics Supplementary Volume), edd. Sophia Papaioannou and Andreas Serafim. De Gruyter, 221-244 (in press).

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2020) “Constructing a New Imperial Paradoxography: Phlegon and His Sources.” Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96-235: Cross-Cultural Interactions, edd. A. König, R. Langlands, and J. Uden. Cambridge University Press, 159-178.

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2020) “Life After Transition: Spontaneous Sex Change and Its Aftermath in Ancient Literature.” Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World, edd. A. Surtees and J. Dyer. Intersectionality in Classical Antiquity. Edinburgh University Press, 67-78.

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2019) “Phlegon’s Paradoxical Physiology: Centaurs in the Peri Thaumasion.” Medicine and Paradoxography (De Gruyter, Trends in Classics Supplementary
Volume 81), ed. G. Kazantzidis, 141-162.

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2018) “Women in Thucydides: Absence and Inferiority.” Women and the Ideology of Political Exclusion: From Antiquity to the Modern Era, edd. A. Tsakiropoulou-Summers and K. Kitsi-Mytakou, Routledge, 89-103.

K.E. Shannon. (2018) “Livy and Tacitus on Floods: Intertextuality, Prodigies, and Cultural Memory.” In Les historiens grecs et romains: entre sources et modèles, edd. O. Devillers and B.B. Sebastiani, Ausonius Éditions, 233-246.

K.E. Shannon. (2014) “Aetiology of the Other: Foreign Religions in Tacitus’ Histories.” In Von Ursachen sprechen. Eine aitiologische Spurensuche/Telling origins. On the lookout for aetiology, edd. C. Reitz and A. Walter, Georg Olms Verlag, 271-300.

K.E. Shannon. (2013) “Authenticating the Marvellous: Mirabilia in Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius.” Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.9.

“Tacitus and Paradoxography,” Tacitus’ Wonders, edd. James McNamara and Victoria Pagán. Bloomsbury, 17-51.

K. Shannon-Henderson. (2023) “De mirabilibus auscultationibus and Heraclides of Pontus,” Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia, edd. Stefan Schorn and Robert Mayhew. Routledge, 147-170.

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (forthcoming 2025) “Tacitus and the Destruction of the Temple,” Tacitus and the Incomplete, edd. Bram ten Berge and Panayiotakis Christoforou. Michigan University Press.

K.E. Shannon-Henderson, “Annals 5-6: The End of the Beginning,” in Salvador Bartera and K.E. Shannon-Henderson, edd. (forthcoming 2025) Oxford Critical Guide to Tacitus, Oxford University Press. (in press).

Salvador Bartera and K.E. Shannon-Henderson, edd. (forthcoming 2025) “Introduction,” Oxford Critical Guide to Tacitus, Oxford University Press. (in press).

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (forthcoming 2026) “Entering the Bone Fields: Autopsy, Memory, Marvel.” Every Bone Has a Story, edd. M. Gerolemou and C. Scott. Cambridge University Press. (accepted)

Peer Reviewed Publications

K. Shannon. (2012) “Memory, Religion, and History in Nero’s Great Fire: Tacitus Annals 15.41-7.” CQ 62, 749-765.

K.E. Shannon. (2011) “Livy’s Cossus and Augustus, Tacitus’ Germanicus and Tiberius: A Historiographical Allusion.” Histos 5, 266-282.

Review

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2020) Review of Graham Anderson, Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature (Routledge, 2020). Classical Journal Online 2020.12.11.

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2020) Review of Joseph J. Walsh, The Great Fire of Rome: Life and Death in the Ancient City (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). New England Classical Journal 47, 64-66.

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2019) Review of John Grainger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis (Mohr-Siebeck, 2019). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2019.09.23.

K.E. Shannon. (2017) “Tacitus’ Histories, Provincial Soldiers, and Didactic Historiography.” (Review of J. Master, Provincial Soldiers and Imperial Instability in the Histories of Tacitus, University of Michigan Press, 2016). Histos 11, xci-xcvii.

K.E. Shannon. (2015) Review of S.J.V. Malloch, The Annals of Tacitus, Book 11 (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Exemplaria Classica 19, 197-200.

K. Shannon-Henderson. (2021) “Speech and Senatorial Politics in Tacitus.” (Review of E. O’Gorman, Tacitus’ History of Politically Effective Speech: Truth to Power, London: Bloomsbury, 2020). Histos 15, cii–cvii.

K.E. Shannon-Henderson. (2025) Review of Bram L. H. ten Berge: Writing Imperial History. Tacitus from Agricola to Annales (University of Michigan Press, 2023). Sehepunkte 25, Nr. 1. https://sehepunkte.org/2025/01/druckfassung/38528.html

Encyclopedia Article

K.E. Shannon. (2019) “Tacitus,” Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online. (print version 2022)

K.E. Shannon. (2014) 21 entries in The Virgil Encyclopedia, edd. R. Thomas and J. Ziolkowski, Wiley-Blackwell.

Entries on Diana; fire of 64 CE; Paphian Venus; paradoxography; religion; Roman gods; and Serapis for The Tacitus Encyclopedia, ed. Victoria Pagán. (forthcoming)

Entry on Tacitus (10,000 words) for Bloomsbury Classic History in Context, ed. Tracey Loughran. Bloomsbury. 

Work in Progress

“Marvels as lieux de mémoire in Suetonius’ Caesares.” Roman Cultural Memory under the Empire, edd. M. Dinter and M. Martinho. Cambridge University Press. (under review)

Monograph-length (ca. 200,000 words) commentary on historical fragments of Herakleides Pontikos, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Part IV/Brill Jacoby Online, Brill. (under contract)

K.E. Shannon-Henderson “Constructing Emperor Cult in the Letters between Pliny and Trajan.” Empire of Correspondence, edd. Zachary Herz, Elsemieke Daalder, Matthijs Wibier. (in preparation)

K.E. Shannon-Henderson “Manufacturing Resurrection and Apotheosis: Herakleides of Pontos and Empedokles.” A Perfect Death?, edd. Ide François and Wim Nijs. (in preparation)