A specialist in Roman poetry of the first century CE (Ovid, Seneca, and Statius), Mira Seo has published on allusive characterization and concepts of the self in Roman literature (Exemplary Traits: Reading Characterization in Roman Poetry, Oxford 2013), and the rhetoric of money in Roman poetry.  She has several publications on the neo-Latin poetry of Juan Latino, an African Latinist in 16th century Granada, and diversifying Classics (“Classics for All” AJP 140.4, 2019).  She is currently writing on trans-species empathy between humans and animals in comparative ancient epic.

Mira Seo has been deeply engaged with liberal arts education, core curriculum development, and globalizing the Humanities throughout her career.  Mira began her career at Swarthmore College followed by the University of Michigan, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in the Departments of Classical Studies and Comparative Literature. She was a member of the Teagle Foundation’s National Forum for Liberal Education, and has held fellowships at the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at Harvard.  In 2012 she was recruited to the inaugural faculty of Yale-NUS College, a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore.  At Yale-NUS, Mira led a collaborative Humanities faculty team to design a new Common Curriculum, served as Head of the Literature major, and co-founded an innovative minor in Global Antiquity.  She has chaired a number of governance committees and task forces to develop college policies, and in 2019 was the inaugural recipient of the Yale-NUS Distinguished Teaching Excellence Award.  In AY 2020-21 Mira joined college leadership as Director of the Common Curriculum and co-chaired an extensive internal and external review of the Common Curriculum. From January 2023, Mira served as Vice Provost of Fulbright University in Vietnam where she was also Interim Dean of Undergraduate Studies. At Fulbright, Mira led initiatives on strategic planning, institutional research, and academic assessment, as well as teaching in the Core Curriculum.