Joel Christensen

Senior Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs
Professor of Classical Studies

Joel Christensen is a Professor of Classical Studies and the Senior Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs. He received his BA and MA from Brandeis in 2001 in Classics and English and his PhD in Classics from New York University in 2007, where he also received an Advanced Certificate in Poetics and Theory.

Previously Joel served as the Chair of Classical Studies, Chair of the Brandeis Faculty Senate, and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the School of Arts and Sciences. Joel taught for nine years at the University of Texas at San Antonio where he received the Society for Classical Studies’ Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Collegiate Level (2013). His research interests include early Greek poetry, myth, and literary theory.

With Elton Barker, Joel has published “Homer’s a Beginner’s Guide” (2013) and “Homer’s Thebes” (Harvard University Press, 2020). Joel has also recently published “The Many-Minded Man: The Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic” (2020) with Cornell University Press and “Storylife: On Epic, Language, and Living Things” (Yale 2025). Joel lives with his wife, Shahnaaz ’01, DDS and their three children, Aalia, Iskander, and Layla, in Medford, MA.