Malamud studied Classics and Islamic Studies at Boston University, graduating with a BA in 1980. She continued her studies at the University of California, Berkeley completing her MA in Near Eastern Studies in 1983 and her PhD in 1990. Following two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in History at Stanford University, Malamud joined the faculty of New Mexico State University in 1992 as Assistant Professor of Ancient History and Islamic Studies. She became Associate Professor in 1998 and Professor of Ancient History and Islamic Studies in 2009. Malamud is Director Graduate Studies and S.P. and Margaret Manasse Research Chair in the College of Arts and Sciences. Malamud has received a number of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, most recently for the project Black Minerva: African Americans and the Classics which resulted in her 2016 book African Americans and the Classics: Antiquity, Abolition and Activism. She has also received grants for projects including Understanding Islam: Infusing Islamic Studies into the undergraduate Humanities Curriculum and The Uses and the Abuses of Roman Antiquity in American Culture, the latter resulting in her 2009 book Ancient Rome and Modern America. Malamud's 2016 book African Americans and the Classics: Antiquity, Abolition and Activism has been widely received as a fundamental step in the study of classics in the United States. Malamud's work draws together the evidence for the use of classics and classical education in the fight for the abolition of slavery and the social and economic emancipation of African Americans. Malamud is currently working on the reception of antiquity in the United States, including the 1610 epic poem, Historia de la Nueva México, by Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, which contains extensive reference to the work of Virgil, Homer, and Lucan. Malamud was the Dorothy Tarrant Fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, London March-June 2019. She delivered the Dorothy Tarrant Memorial lecture on 13th May 2019 entitled, Antiquity, Abolition, and Activism in Nineteenth Century American Visual Arts.
Selected publications
African Americans and the Classics: Antiquity, Abolition and Activism.
“‘A Kind of Moral Gladiatorship’: Abolitionist Uses of the Classics.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 23.2 : 57-90.
“An African in a Toga: Joseph Cinqué and the Roman Rhetoric of the American Revolution.” Classical World 108.4 : 525-35.
