Franklin Professor of Classics Emeritus Richard A. LaFleur is Franklin Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Georgia, where he taught from 1972 to 2012 and served for 21 years as head of one of the largest Classics and Latin programs in North America. His books include The Teaching of Latin in American Schools: A Profession in Crisis, Latin Poetry for the Beginning Student, Love and Transformation: An Ovid Reader, Latin for the 21st Century: From Concept to Classroom, A Song of War: Readings from Vergil’s Aeneid (with Alexander G. McKay), Scribblers, Scvlptors, and Scribes, Ubi Fera Sunt (the authorized Latin translation of Maurice Sendak’s popular children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are), The Secret Lives of Words (a collection of his nationally syndicated newspaper columns), and the revised editions of Wheelock’s Latin, Wheelock’s Latin Reader, and Workbook for Wheelock’s Latin. Throughout his career LaFleur has worked closely with K-12 teachers and their students and has been a consultant to numerous educational agencies at the local, regional, and national level. He served as editor of The Classical Outlook (CO) for nearly 25 years and for two years as President of the American Classical League (ACL); he was appointed honorary CO Editor for Life and Honorary ACL President for Life, and has been recipient of over a million dollars in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other agencies, and of numerous awards, including the American Philological Association’s award for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics, ACL’s Meritus Award, and the Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. He writes columns for his two series “The Secret Lives of Words” and “When I was 12 or So,” which have appeared in hundreds of U.S. newspapers, and he founded and administers the FACEBOOK group, “Latin in the Real World,” which has about 5,000 members. He and his wife Alice have five children, eleven glorious grandchildren, and divide their time—under the careful watch of their French bulldog Ipsa and their manx cat Augustus — between their primary residence on Lake Oglethorpe, near Athens, Georgia, and their modest cottages in Apalachicola, Florida, and Little Switzerland, North Carolina. Research Research Interests: Latin language and literature -- especially Vergil, Ovid, Juvenal, and satire -- and Latin pedagogy.
