Samuel J. Huskey

Professor of Classics and Letters

Email: huskey@ou.edu | Office: CARN 116 | Full CV

Research

My research interests combine traditional philology with computational and digital humanities. In my early career, I focused on Latin poetry in the age of Augustus, particularly the exile poetry of Ovid. I have expanded my focus to other time periods, and my current projects include a translation (with collaborator Jason Houston) of the shorter Latin works of Boccaccio.

My major project is the Digital Latin Library, a collaborative effort of the Society for Classical Studies (formerly the American Philological Association), the Medieval Academy of America, and the Renaissance Society of America. The DLL was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and continues to be hosted at OU.

Recently, I have been developing machine learning applications to facilitate humanities research. My first foray into AI/ML resulted in a process for cleaning and processing "noisy" bibliographical data for the DLL's catalog. I'm also working on an automatic speech recognition model for the low-resource language Enenlhet and an AI-assisted metadata generation tool for the study of Coptic manuscripts.

Teaching

I particularly enjoy teaching general education courses such as Classical Mythology, Greek Literature in English Translation, Latin Literature in English Translation, Ancient Drama, and Ancient Epic because it's fun to introduce students to the subject of Classical culture. I also cherish the time that I spend with my advanced Latin students discussing everything from grammar and syntax to rhetorical and literary technique. Every other year I get to teach the Latin prose composition course, which always culminates with the students writing their autobiographies in Latin.

Service

I served as chair of the department from 2009 until 2019. I currently serve on numerous committees at the college and university levels.

For several years I was the Webmaster and a member of the Executive Committee of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and I chaired the local committee when the University of Oklahoma hosted that organization in the spring of 2010. In 2011 I began serving as Information Architect for the Society for Classical Studies, and I am involved in several of that organization's committee by virtue of that position.