Bio
Yopie Prins is the Irene Butter Collegiate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Ladies’ Greek: Victorian Translations of Tragedy (2017) and Victorian Sappho (1999), and co-editor of The Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology (2014) and Dwelling in Possibility: Women Poets and Critics on Poetry (1997).
Her areas of research and teaching include classical reception studies, nineteenth-century poetry and historical prosody, comparative poetics and lyric theory, critical translation studies and gender studies. She is the recipient of two NEH Fellowships (1993, 1999) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003).
She grew up in Delft, The Netherlands and in Syracuse, New York. In 1981 she graduated with Highest Honors in Ancient Greek from Swarthmore College, where her teachers included Lucy McDiarmid, Helen North, Georgia Nugent, Martin Ostwald, and Gil Rose. As a Marshall Scholar, she continued her studies at Newnham College in Cambridge University for a B.A./M.A. in English Literature, completed in 1983.
During 1983-84, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to translate Dutch poetry and pursue Translation Studies with James S Holmes at the University of Amsterdam. In 1991 she completed a Ph.D in Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where she studied classical Greek literature with Anne Carson, Robert Fagles, Richard Martin, Glenn Most, and Froma Zeitlin, and nineteenth-century English literature with David Bromwich and Ulrich Knoepflmacher.
After teaching in the English Department at Oberlin College in Ohio, Yopie Prins was appointed in 1994 as Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2000 she was a founding member of Contexts for Classics, an interdepartmental faculty consortium. Over the past two decades she has also been involved in interdisciplinary translation initiatives across campus, including a Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest (2021-23) and an ongoing public humanities project on Translating Michigan.
Yopie Prins has served as Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature from 2008-2012 and again from 2016-2022. She was elected to serve as Vice President (2013-15) and President (2015-16) of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Currently she is a member of the Executive Committee for the Association of Departments and Programs of Comparative Literature (ADPCL).
Her current research projects include a book on meter and music in Victorian poetry, entitled “Voice Inverse.” During spring 2027 Yopie Prins will be in residence as Sather Professor of Classical Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she will present a series of lectures entitled “Sappho Echoes.”
Links
Follow Yopie Prins on Academia.edu
Awards and Fellowships
NEH Grant awarded by Michigan Humanities Council, for “Visualizing Migration: Translating Detroit” (2023-24)
Co-PI, Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series, “Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest” (2021-23)
Ladies’ Greek, Best Book Prize, North American Victorian Studies Association (2018)
Ladies’ Greek, Robert Lowry Patten Prize in 19th-c Literature, SEL Studies in English Literature (2018)
Irene Butter Collegiate Professorship, University of Michigan (2015)
Commendation,Vondel Prize for Translation from the Dutch, Society of Authors, London (2014)
Faculty Recognition Award, University of Michigan (2011)
Visiting Fellow, Princeton University Council for the Humanities (2004)
Guggenheim Fellowship (2003-2004)
Henry Russel Award for Research and Teaching, University of Michigan (2002)
Victorian Sappho, Honorable Mention for MLA First Book Prize (1999)
Victorian Sappho, Sonya Rudikoff Prize for First Book in Victorian Studies (1999)
“Greek Maenads, Victorian Spinsters,” Best Essay Prize, Women’s Classical Caucus of the American Philological Association (1999)
NEH Fellowship for University Teachers (1999-2000)
LSA Class of 1929 Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Michigan (1998)
Research Fellow, Institute for Research on Women & Gender, University of Michigan (Fall 1996)
NEH Fellowship for College Teachers (1993-1994)
Incentive Award, Journal of Classical and Modern Literature (1992)
Whiting Fellow, Princeton University (1988-1989)
Seeger Fellow for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University (Summer 1987)
Mellon Fellow, Princeton University (1984-1988)
Fulbright Scholar at University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1983-1984)
Marshall Scholar, Cambridge University (1981-1983)
Phi Beta Kappa, Swarthmore College (1981)
Hayes Prize for Translation, Swarthmore College (1980)
National Scholar, Swarthmore College (1977-1981)
Photos
Headshots by Michael Daugherty. Click on image to download.
Special thanks to Andrea Eis for permission to feature on this website images of her work from andreaeisart.com