About

Areas of Research

Roman Historiography, Tacitus; post-Augustan literature; gardens in literature; conspiracy and conspiracy theory

Background

Distinguished Professor of Classics at the University of Florida, Victoria Emma Pagán is the 2024-2025 University of Florida Teacher/Scholar of the Year and recipient of the SEC Academic Consortium Faculty Achievement Award. She was a University of Florida Term Professor for 2017-2020. She was also a University of Florida Research Foundation Professor for 2014-2016  and a recipient of a Teaching Award in 2010 in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

With over thirty articles on Latin literature, her research focuses on the Roman historians and post-Augustan writers. She has written twin studies on conspiracy for the University of Texas Press: Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History (2004) and Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature (2012).

She is the author of Rome and the Literature of Gardens (London 2006); A Sallust Reader (Wauconda 2009); andTacitus (London 2017).

She is the editor of the Blackwell Companion to Tacitus (2012) and the two-volume Tacitus Encyclopedia published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2023 (see the CLAS feature article).

With James McNamara she co-edited Tacitus’ Wonders: Empire and Paradox in Ancient Rome (2023) and Early Modern Receptions of Tacitus: High Tacitism (in production, 2026).

With Judith W. Page she co-edited twin volumes, Disciples of Flora: Gardens in History and Culture (2015, with Brigitte Weltman-Aron) and Women and the Collaborative Art of Gardens: From Antiquity to the Present (2024).

She is a founding member of the Mountaintop Coalition; former co-chair of the Women’s Classical Caucus (2024-2026); former president of The Classical Association of the Middle West and South (2025-2026); and president of the Society for Classical Studies (2027). She is co-chair of the University of Florida Intercollegiate Athletic Committee.

Born and raised in Ravenna, Ohio, Victoria spent a year at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, Rhode Island before she earned her B.A. in Latin at Kent State University, her M.A. in Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. in Classical Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. She resides in Gainesville with her husband, Andrew Wolpert.

Contact Information

Email: vepagan@ufl.edu