James M. Redfield, a University of Chicago scholar renowned for his groundbreaking research on the ancient Greek world and revered for shaping generations of students, died May 28 at the age of 91.
The Edward Olson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages and Literatures, in the Committee on Social Thought, the Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World, and the College, Redfield, AM’54, PhD’61, was a member of the UChicago faculty for over five decades. His scholarship analyzed the works of classical thinkers such as Homer and Plato through an anthropological lens, and his teaching, which focused on Greek language, literature and social theory, was recognized with two Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
“It is hard to overstate Jamie’s influence on the Committee on Social Thought and vice versa,” said Prof. Gabriel Lear, chair of the Committee on Social Thought. “His scholarship was a shining example of its ethos, combining anthropological, literary, and philosophical approaches to the classical Greek world with enormous erudition and sensitivity.”
Redfield’s most influential book, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector (1984), which placed an anthropological perspective on the role of Hector in the Iliad, had an enormous impact on the field of classics, shifting the way people thought about the structure and sense of the epic poem.
The night before he died, Redfield’s son handed him an unmarked text of Plato’s Republic. Redfield opened it to where he had left off several weeks before, reading and translating it to his son and the hospice nurse, offering options for alternate translations.
“Redfield was a profoundly original, incisive, and intuitive anthropologist who worked above all on the ancient Greeks, especially their philosophical and literary texts and their religion,” said Glenn W. Most, a visiting professor on the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought and previously professor of Greek Philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
“His uniquely personal approach, untrammeled by doctrinaire theories and energized by his fascination with trying to understand both what it was that people—including himself—thought they were doing and what it was that they were really doing, had a profound impact on everyone who read his writings or who experienced him in the classroom.”
‘A beautiful writer’
Redfield was born in Chicago in 1935, spending his early years living at ethnographic field sites in Yucatan, Guatemala and China with his father and mother, anthropologists Robert Redfield and Margaret Park Redfield.
He credited a trip to Florence, Italy, at the age of 13 with sparking his interest in Italy, Greece and the ancient world. He graduated from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory Schools in 1950, and Redfield received his undergraduate degree from UChicago in 1954 before studying at New College, Oxford, from 1956 to 1958. He received his Ph.D. from UChicago in 1961 and joined the faculty in 1960 at age 25. He was awarded tenure concurrently with becoming the Master of the New Collegiate Division in 1968.
He wasn’t the first in his family to teach at UChicago: His father taught anthropology and ethnolinguistics, and served as dean of the Division of the Social Sciences from 1934 to 1946. His maternal grandfather, Robert E. Park, taught sociology at UChicago from 1914 to 1933 and played a key role in the Chicago School of Sociology.
During his career, Redfield wrote and spoke extensively on Homer, Herodotus, Plato and Greek society. He authored three books: Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector (1984); The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in Greek Italy (2003); and Plato’s Seventh Letter (2026), which was published this past March. Two of his early lectures are memorialized in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, included in their Chicago Lectures collection.
“He was beholden to no school, but he was open to all manner of influences and conversations,” says Laura M. Slatkin, a visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the Gallatin Distinguished Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University. “He combined anthropological sensitivity with this real philological and linguistic brilliance, and very profound interpretive subtlety. And he was a beautiful writer.”
A naturally eloquent teacher
In a 2015 issue of CORE Magazine, Redfield said: “Teaching is not an art, exactly, it’s not a skill. It’s a relationship.” In the classroom, he is remembered for encouraging his students with challenging questions, helping them develop their own line of thought.
Before his retirement in 2016, Redfield held the unique distinction of being one of the two-time winners of the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, first in 1965 and again in 1987.
“There was no student who was so ill-informed or so confused that Redfield could not find what was valuable, even if entirely inchoate, in his desire to learn,” Most recalled.
His lectures were also highly regarded—and sometimes deftly designed in the moment. Chris Faraone, the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Classics and the College, recalled an instance when Redfield forgot it was his turn to teach their shared course one day, but was able to immediately bring the lesson to life.
“He walks back and forth in front of the blackboard three times, and then he starts this amazing lecture on death and funerary rituals with an anecdote about his mother's funeral,” Faraone said. “It was just amazing. I wish I had a tape recorder.”
Slatkin said she was riveted by the first lecture she saw Redfield give, and he eventually convinced her to come to UChicago to teach. She said Redfield was naturally eloquent and articulate—and always original, “never secondhand.”
Faraone said many student dissertations were likely inspired by a question or comment from Redfield.
Bruce M. King met Redfield as an undergraduate, and the late professor became King’s academic advisor. The two maintained their connection long after, which included a trip to Greece and Turkey where they explored ancient sites. In 2019, King co-edited Thinking the Greeks: A Volume in Honor of James M. Redfield, a collection of essays exploring themes that Redfield studied throughout his career: Homer, Plato, Philostratus, and beyond.
“Jamie always made it clear that he wasn't looking for acolytes or for people who are going to think like Jamie thought,” said King, now at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. “He was interested in people who could think their own way through, and he was there to help you with it and suggest and read. I found that liberating. It could be challenging, but eventually you found your way—and it was genuinely your way. I think that's pretty rare.”
Redfield was disinterested in his students regurgitating his work and was rarely—if ever—repetitious, his friends and colleagues say, choosing instead to engage with his studies anew to develop original perspectives.
But with his intellectual intensity also came a sense of humor. One notable example is a 1997 essay he wrote, which appeared in The Point in 2023, in which he addresses the ideas of celebrity and the shadow self by way of his envy of the other James Redfield, author of the best-selling Celestine Prophecy.
In addition to his scholarship, Redfield was also part of Hyde Park’s Last Stage, an independent storefront theater company founded in the 1950s by Court Theatre and other UChicago associates. The Last Stage produced Redfield’s adaptations and original translations of Aristophanes' The Clouds and The Frogs. He took Shakespeare acting classes and performed in three productions with Hyde Park Community Players, including playing the lead role of Robert in David Auburn’s Proof. He was known for his cooking and a love for his dogs.
Redfield is survived by three children: Emily Gilliam, James Adam Redfield and Claire K. Redfield. His oldest son, Robert Redfield, passed away in 2020. Redfield is also survived by three grandchildren: Isaac Redfield, Amy Cordelia Redfield Ochs and Levi Redfield Ochs.