Emily Lord-Kambitsch

Emily Lord-Kambitsch, Ph.D, is Co-Chair and an Associate Core Faculty member of the Mythological Studies Program. A scholar, poet-storyteller, and native of Santa Barbara, her lifelong exploration of classical mythology is rooted in the study of Greek and Latin language and literature. After completing a BA in Classics at UCSB, Emily received a Master’s degree from the University of Oxford, where her thesis focused on the healing of grief in Roman stoicism, and where she worked as a research assistant for the Oxford Emotions Project, a cross-disciplinary study of definitions of emotions in ancient Greece.

In 2016 Emily received her PhD in Classics at University College London (UCL). Her thesis examined emotions as an important mode for audience engagement with representations of antiquity in modern popular fiction, theatre, and cinema. The thesis has yielded articles in publications including the journal, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, and the collections, Rewriting the Ancient World: Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians in Modern Popular Fiction (Brill, 2017) and Star Attractions: Twentieth-century Movie Magazines and Global Fandom (University of Iowa Press, 2019). Her current research traces the relationship between memory, longing, and selfhood in the voices of women from Greek tragedy.

A prize-winning poet and author of a poetic memoir, Western Yoga: A Field Report on Desertion and Deliverance (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Emily has ceaseless curiosity about nature, religious experience, Greco-Roman myth, memory, and the transmission of story and artifacts, personal and ancestral. Her commissioned writing was featured in the showcase, “Weaving Women’s Stories”, at London’s Being Human Festival in 2018, and has performed with Backbone Storytelling and at the Narrative Loft in Santa Barbara. She regularly co-facilitates a series of Mythic Movement workshops in Santa Barbara, combining elements of intuitive movement and guided visualization to invite participants’ embodied engagement with mythical themes and characters, and co-hosts a monthly community discussion on mythic/philosophical themes (Love, Frienship, Ritual, Renewal, Myth) at Wylde Works in downtown Santa Barbara.

Emily arrived at Pacifica after 8 years in the UK and a series of lectureships at UCL and UCSB, and at Pacifica she teaches courses in Greco-Roman myth, ritual studies, memoir and self-writing, research approaches, and dissertation formulation. She is passionate about supporting students’ connection with the perennial stories that call to them through academic, artistic, and personal lenses.

See her personal website for more information: https://www.emilylordkambitsch.com/