Yale-NUS faculty’s latest literary contributions: From bibliomania to ancient epics

Along with a strong focus on teaching, the faculty at Yale-NUS College are also dedicated to research and scholarship, consistently producing academic works that contribute meaningfully to their respective fields. Recently, two literature professors from the Humanities division added to this tradition with their new books.

Associate Professor of Humanities (Literature) Andrew Hui’s The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries, published on 3 December 2024, offers a uniquely personal look into the Renaissance library and its lasting legacy, exploring the relationship between bibliophiles and their reading spaces.

For Assoc Prof Hui, The Study is a reflection of the deep, sometimes overwhelming love of books: “It’s really a book about loving books and sometimes loving books too much – so the path from bibliophilia to bibliomania, and even bibliophobia,” Assoc Prof Hui explained. “I hope readers can also think about the relationship between our inner lives and the spaces we inhabit – in other words, interiority, inwardness, interior spaces.”

The project took shape during the pandemic when the constraints of the lockdown sparked reflections on reading as a form of solace. However, Assoc Prof Hui’s focus remained on the enduring idea of what it means to be immersed in books, and the research itself evolved beyond the pandemic.

Yale-NUS played a key role in facilitating his work, with a student research assistant and the College’s librarians who helped to source crucial materials. “Neither NUS nor Yale-NUS libraries have that many books in early modern European studies, so I’m very grateful for their support,” Assoc Prof Hui noted. Through digital archives, interlibrary loans, and scholarly networks, he was able to piece together a study that captures the essence of Renaissance libraries and their continued significance.

Meanwhile, Associate Professor of Humanities (Literature) Steven Green’s edition of the Ilias Latina is set for publication on 16 May 2025. This work offers a fresh look at a Latin poem that reimagines Homer’s Iliad for a Roman audience. As Assoc Prof Green shared, “I have always been fascinated by Roman retellings of the Trojan War, and the Ilias Latina offers a complete – if condensed, eroticised, and reconfigured – version attuned to the Roman audience’s literary and cultural sensibilities.”

The book provides a new Latin text, an English translation, and a line-by-line commentary that allows readers to appreciate the poem on its own terms while also placing it in dialogue with more well-known classical texts. Assoc Prof Green also extends his appreciation for the support around him. He expressed, “I started work on the project in late 2019, and I am extremely grateful to both Yale-NUS and NUS for, respectively, sabbatical leave and an internal research grant by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), that allowed me to spend the whole of 2021 on the project.”

Assoc Prof Green sees his book as valuable not only to professional academics and students of classical literature but also to anyone hooked on modern reinterpretations of ancient myths. “For more general enthusiasts, particularly those who enjoyed modern novels such as The Silence of the Girls (Pat Barker) or Circe (Madeline Miller), the book will show, implicitly, that eroticised and gendered re-imaginings of the Trojan War were just as popular in antiquity as they are today!”

As Yale-NUS faculty continue to contribute new scholarship, these publications serve as yet another reminder of the intellectual richness cultivated within the College.