Marcel Detienne

Marcel Detienne (October 11, 1935 in Liège, Belgium – March 21, 2019 in Nemours, France) was a Belgian historian and specialist in the study of ancient Greece. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he held the Basil L. Gildersleeve chair in Classics.

Along with Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Detienne has sought to apply an anthropological approach, informed by the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss, to classical and archaic Greece.

Biography
Detienne received his Doctorat en sciences religieuses at the École des Hautes Études in 1960, and his Doctorat en philosophie et lettres from the University of Liège in 1965.

Detienne was at one time a directeur d'études at the École pratique des hautes études, where he taught until 1998. He was also a founder of the Centre de recherches comparées sur les sociétés anciennes in Paris. Detienne began teaching in the Department of Classics at Johns Hopkins University in 1992.