Professor Sara Brill
Sara Brill is Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University, where she has also served as Chair of the Philosophy Department, Chair of the Classical Studies Program, and Associate Chair of the Humanities Institute.
She is currently the editor of Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. She works on the psychology, politics, and ethics of Plato and Aristotle, as well as broader questions of embodiment, life, and power as points of intersection between ancient Greek philosophy and contemporary critical theory. She is the author of Aristotle on the Concept of Shared Life (Oxford UP, 2020) and Plato on the Limits of Human Life (Indiana UP, 2013), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on Plato and Aristotle, ancient Greek medical texts, and tragedy, and is co-editor of Antiquities Beyond Humanism (with Emanuela Bianchi and Brooke Holmes; Oxford UP, 2019) and The Routledge Handbook of Women and Ancient Greek Philosophy (with Catherine McKeen; Routledge, 2024). Early in her career, she worked on the conceptual apparatus by means of which Plato developed essential features of his psychology. More recently, her work has centered on the multiple valences of the concept of zōē (life as such) in Aristotle’s thought. During her time at Clare Hall, she will be completing a monograph on literary and visual representations of birth in Greek antiquity, as well as several chapters for edited volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Political Theory (Ed. Carol Atack, Oxford UP,) and Crafting Race in Plato and Aristotle (Eds. Patricia Marechal and John Proios, Oxford UP).
At Clare Hall, Sara is accompanied by her husband Dr. Ryan Drake, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University with specializations in ancient Greek philosophy, aesthetics, and critical theory. Dr. Drake will be a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Classics.
Select publications
- “Plato on How (not) to be Born,” Eugesta, 14, 2025: http://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1573
- “Aristotle on the Practice of Life.” In Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice. Ed. Jacob Greenstine, Ryan Johnson, David Mesing. Edinburgh University Press, 2024, 123-155.
- “Biopolitics and the ‘Boundless People’: An Iliadic Model” in Biopolitics and Ancient Greek Thought. Ed. Jussi Backman and Antonio Cimino. Oxford University Press, 2022 15-37.
- “The Body as Sign and Spectacle.” The Philosopher, summer 2020, 108(3): 34-38.
- “Between Biography and Biology: Bios and Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus” in Knowledge and Ignorance of Self in Platonic Philosophy. Ed. Ambury and German, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 113-131.
- “Greek Philosophy in the 21st Century.” Oxford Handbooks Online, Ed. Classical Studies. Oxford University Press, 2016.
- “Political Pathology in Plato’s Republic.” Apeiron 49(2), 2015, 127-161.
- “Animality and Sexual Difference in the Timaeus’ in Plato’s Animals: Gadflies, Stingrays and other Philosophical Beasts. Ed. Michael Naas and Jeremy Bell. Indiana University Press, 2015, 161-178.
Select awards
- Sabbatical and Special Research Leave, Fairfield University, 2025-2026
- Award for Distinguished Teaching, College of Arts and Science, Fairfield University, 2014
- Fulbright Fellow, Freiburg Germany, 2002-2003 grant period
