Leni Ribeiro Leite

Associate Professor of Classics

Leni Ribeiro Leite is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky. She earned her B.A. in Portuguese and Latin from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (1999), followed by an M.A. (2003) and a Ph.D. (2008) in Classics from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. During the 2013–2014 academic year, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Kentucky. Before joining the University of Kentucky as permanent faculty, she served as Assistant, then Associate Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo from 2009 to 2021. She continues to be affiliated with the university as a collaborator in its Graduate Program in Literatures. Her research focuses on Classical Studies, particularly Latin literature of the Flavian period, and the permanence of Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics in the Portuguese Americas between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. She has also published on Classical Reception, Latin pedagogy, Neo-Latin studies, and multilingualism.

Contact Information
leni.leite@uky.edu
1013 Patterson Office Tower
(859) 257-6754
Research Interests
  • Latin Poetry of the Flavian Era
  • Rhetoric and Poetics in Latin Literature
  • Epideictic Genre
  • Latin paedagogy
  • Latin in Latin America
  • Brazilian Colonial Literature
Affiliations
  • Modern & Classical Languages Literatures & Cultures
  • Classics
  • Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies
  • Renaissance Society of America
  • Sociedade Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos
  • Sociedade Brasileira de Retórica
  • International Association of Neo-Latin Studies