Gretchen Reydams-Schils is professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and holds concurrent appointments in Classics, Philosophy, and Theology. She is a specialist in Plato and the traditions of Platonism and Stoicism.
Gretchen Reydams-Schils gained a BA (magna cum laude) at the Catholic University of Leuven where she majored in Classics, with her Senior Thesis on âÂÂPlatoâÂÂs âÂÂMyth of Erâ in the RepublicâÂÂ; an MA at the University of Cincinnati; and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Her Classics/Ancient Philosophy dissertation was on âÂÂStoic and Platonist Readings of Plato's TimaeusâÂÂ. She acted as Research Fellow in the Institute of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven.
She teaches at the University of Notre Dame, where she also runs the Notre Dame Workshop on Ancient Philosophy, She has been a fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies and at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, and also held positions as visiting professor at the University of Bordeaux, France, in 2013; at Montpellier, Université Paul Valéry, France, in 2005; at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, in 2002; and at Spiritan Missionary Philosophy Seminary, Arusha, Tanzania, in Spring 1998 during a sabbatical. She was Directrice dâÂÂÃÂtudes at the ÃÂcole Pratique des Hautes ÃÂtudes Paris, France, for four seminars on Calcidius, in MayâÂÂJune 2004.
She edited a 2003 edited volume, Plato's Timaeus as Cultural Icon which explored the influence of Plato's Timaeus and attempted to account for its cultural and philosophic status. In her 2005 book The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection, she studied the philosophical basis that underpins the way Roman Stoics integrated philosophy into the social practice of living, friendship, political community, parenting and marriage. In a review, Margaret Graver describes it as looking "beyond the Stoics' ethical absolutism to emphasise, instead, their engagement with other human beings".
She has written over 20 philosophy book reviews for learned journals including The Journal of Roman Studies, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, and Classical Philology. She has also won over 20 academic awards and honours, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, and a EURIAS Senior Fellowship.
She published a letter in the Catholic magazine Commonweal marking her discontent at a change to the Nicene Creed, during the tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, in which the phrase âÂÂborn of the Virgin Maryâ was changed to âÂÂincarnate ofâÂÂ. In the article she argued that the change identified "a deep strand of repulsion at the female body in the Christian tradition". She is married to professor Luc Reydams with three children.