Chris van den Berg (2020 Fellow), a professor of classical studies at Amherst College, is the Interim Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor for 2026-2027.

Chris van den Berg is the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of Classical Studies at Amherst College. In addition to dozens of articles and book reviews, he has published two books thus far: The World of Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus: Aesthetics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press 2014) and The Politics and Poetics of Cicero's Brutus: The Invention of Literary History (Cambridge University Press in 2021, a Choice Selection). He has held fellowships from the DAAD, NEH, ACLS, the Basel Fellowship in Latin Literature, and the Rome Prize (FAAR ’20). He has studied, taught, or held research fellowships in half a dozen countries. Chris’ research focuses on ancient and modern civic and political rhetoric as well as the use of visual and material culture in Greco-Roman writers. 

He is at work on two different books projects. The first, Critical Matter, examines the relationship between physical objects (bodies, statuary, painting, architecture) and systems for the production and evaluation of artistic language, that is, for rhetoric and literary criticism, respectively. This book seeks to understand why Greco-Roman authors relied on things in the world to explain the non-physical yet no less real effects of language in the world. 

A second book, Fightin’ Words: Why We Can’t Resist Rhetoric (and Should Stop Trying) challenges how we conceptualize public persuasion. Fightin’ Words speaks broadly to activists, politicians, academics, and engaged lay readers, who struggle to match reality with ideal: we know that rhetoric plays an outsize role in political debate while also (often) claiming that it should not. This book argues that rather than dismissing “mere rhetoric” we would instead benefit from cultivating the aesthetic nature of the civic sphere to heighten and also to resolve civic disagreements.