Professor Christopher S. Celenza is the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and a professor in the history and classics departments. His research interests include Latin literature and philosophy of the Italian Renaissance; late medieval intellectual history; the history of philosophy; the history of books and reading practices; Latin paleography; and the history of the classical tradition.

Dr. Celenza was previously Dean of Georgetown College at Georgetown University, and a professor of history and classics. Previous to his 2017 move to Georgetown, Dr. Celenza was Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Johns Hopkins and held the Charles Homer Haskins Professorship in classics. He first joined the Krieger School faculty in 2005 as a professor in what was then the Department of German and Romance Languages. He also taught for nine years at Michigan State and holds two doctoral degrees—a doctorate in history (Duke University, 1995) and a doctorate in classics and neo-latin literature (University of Hamburg, 2001).

Dr. Celenza has received numerous awards and grants, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He served as the 21st Director of the American Academy in Rome from 2010 to 2014, and as the founder and first director of JHU’s Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe from 2008 to 2010. He also assisted in the founding of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute.