Pierre Chuvin


Pierre Chuvin was a French hellenist and historian. He was specialized on ancient Greece and Greek mythology, as well as modern Central Asia and the Turkic-speaking world.

Biography

He studied at the Université de Clermont-Ferrand under Francis Vian and the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes, where he learned modern Greek and Turkish, and did an agrégation on classical literature. In 1983 he presented his doctoral thesis on the ancient Greek epic Dionysiaca by Nonnus.
He was a professor at the Blaise Pascal University until 1998 and after that at the Paris Nanterre University. He created and led the Institut français d'études sur l'Asie centrale in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and founded the journal Les Cahiers de l'Asie centrale. From 2003 to 2008 he was the director of the Institut français d'études anatoliennes in Istanbul.
He wrote more than 70 articles for the magazine L'Histoire.

Legacy

In April 2020, the American band the Mountain Goats released an album entitled Songs for Pierre Chuvin, inspired by Chuvin's 1990 book A Chronicle of the Last Pagans.

Selected publications