Sarah Iles Johnston

Sarah Iles Johnston is an American classicist and historian of religion. She is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Religion at Ohio State University and Professor of Classics, with affiliations in Comparative Studies and History. Her work examines ancient Greek myth and religion, with particular attention to divination, ghosts and the afterlife, and the ways narratives foster belief. Her books include Restless Dead, Ancient Greek Divination, The Story of Myth, and, with Fritz Graf, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife. In 2023 she published her first book for general readers, Gods and Mortals: Ancient Greek Myths for Modern Readers.

Education and career

Johnston earned a B.S. in Journalism in 1979 and a B.A. in Classics in 1980 from the University of Kansas. She received an M.A. in Classics in 1983 and a Ph.D. in 1987 from Cornell University, where she also served as a teaching assistant.
Johnston began her academic career as a lecturer in Classics at Princeton University in 1987–1988. She joined Ohio State University in 1988 as assistant professor of Classics, became associate professor of Greek and Latin in 1995, and has been professor of Classics since 2000. She served as the founding director of Ohio State's Center for the Study of Religion from 2006 to 2010. She was named Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Religion in 2011 and College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Religion in 2017. She also holds appointments in Comparative Studies and in History.

Awards and fellowships

Johnston's fellowships include Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in spring 1995, Fondation Hardt Fellow in 1996, Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago's Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion in fall 1997, ACLS Senior Fellow and Visiting Fellow in Princeton University's Department of Classics in 1999–2000, and Lichtenberg-Kolleg Fellow at the University of Göttingen from March to July 2012.

Research and writing

Johnston's scholarship focuses on Greek myths and ancient Mediterranean religions. She has written on the dead and their interactions with the living, on divination, and on how narrative structures sustain religious belief. Restless Dead examined Greek ghost stories, ritual, and social memory. Ancient Greek Divination surveyed practices across periods and media. The Story of Myth argued that myths work as stories that create belief and social meaning. Gods and Mortals retells Greek myths for a general audience while foregrounding sources and reception.
Her recent articles and chapters include "The Religious Affordance of Supernatural Horror Fiction" in Numen 70, which argues that some supernatural horror can supply ideas that readers use to build a religious outlook. She has also written on Hecate and apotheosis in Mesembria and on ancient Greek tales of the afterlife for a Getty Museum volume connected to the exhibition Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife in Ancient South Italian Vase Painting. She contributed "Magic and Theurgy" to Brill's Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic.
In May 2024 she delivered a TEDx Ohio State University talk, "Why Supernatural Horror Might Make You Think of God".

Publications

Books

Gods and Mortals: Ancient Greek Myths for Modern Readers.The Story of Myth.Ancient Greek Divination.

With Fritz Graf, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets.Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece.Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate's Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature, originally Scholars Press, now distributed by Oxford University Press.

Edited volumes

Narrating Religion.Ancient Religions.

Co-editor, with Peter T. Struck, Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination.
General editor, Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide.
Co-editor, with James J. Clauss, Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art.

Selected chapters and articles

"The Religious Affordance of Supernatural Horror Fiction," Numen 70, 2–3, 113–137, 2023.
"Here Lies Hecate: Poetry and Immortality in Second-Century Mesembria," Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 24, 305–18, 2022.
"Ancient Greek Tales of the Afterlife," in David Saunders, ed., Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife in Ancient South Italian Vase Painting.
"Magic and Theurgy," in David T. Frankfurter, ed., Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, 694–719.

Other

2024 TEDx talk: "Why Supernatural Horror Might Make You Think of God".