Dr. Hans Bork

Hans Bork earned his PhD at UCLA. His research specialties concern Latin language and literature from often overlooked time-periods or genres: Archaic and Old Latin epigraphy; Latin comedy, especially Plautus; non-standard Latin of all periods; Late Latin and Proto-Romance. His other speciality areas include non-Latin Italic languages (e.g., Oscan, Umbrian, Etruscan), Historical and Comparative Linguistics (esp. Italic and PIE), Greek Dialectology, and the developments of Latin during Late Antiquity.

He thinks of himself as a "Historian of Language" — someone who studies not just how languages change over time, but how they are used as they are, why that is so, and what social forces lead them to change. In terms of research, his current major project concerns insults and humor in Latin comedy. His monograph (Making Fun in Roman Comedy: Humor and Abuse) documents how insults and humor are both social phenomena, and argues that in Latin comedy insults can be understood only after considering the sociolinguistic, performative, and historical aspects of a play in performance.

More broadly, Hans is interested in the intersection of language and social identity, as well as jokes and humor in performance. He has several articles forthcoming or in print that deal with this topic from various perspectives. More practically, he is also interested in Humanities pedagogy, and after joining the Stanford department, he developed a graduate-level pedagogy training course for student instructors. He is currently developing several new classes for the department centered around the reception of Classics in electronic media, especially video games and short-form video.