Pernille Harsting's homepage
* MA in Latin and Greek (University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 1988)
* Ph.D. in classical philology and the history of rhetoric (University of Copenhagen, 1993)
* Former research fellow at the Dept. of Classical Philology, University of Copenhagen
* Former associate professor of rhetoric at Örebro University, Sweden
* Founder and general editor (2003-2011) of Rhetorical Review, The Electronic Review of Books on the History of Rhetoric (ISSN: 1901-2640)
* Member, 1999-2005, of the board of The International Society for the History of Rhetoric (member of the ISHR council 1999-2003; of the ISHR nominating committee 2003-2005)
* Member of the editorial board of ISHR's journal Rhetorica, 2003-2011
On my anti-plagiarism and pro-integrity work (2009->)
In 2009-2010, I collaborated with Michael V. Dougherty and Russell L. Friedman on the documentation of a case of serial plagiarism by a philosophy professor based at the KULeuven. The discovery, in the autumn of 2009, of extensive plagiarism in an article published in the journal Recherches de théologie et philosophie médievales led to the time-consuming effort of examining all of the philosophy professor's publications and documenting the plagiarism found in each and every one of them. The findings are reported in our co-written 2010 article: "40 Cases of Plagiarism", see (1) below.
The discovery of the serial plagiarism – and the fact that it was possible to make a career in the field of philosophy on the basis of fake publications and good connections – should have been a wake-up call to the scholarly community. But time has shown that plagiarism is a problem that mars not a few scholarly publications, and that there is much resistance from representatives of the scholarly fields to acknowledge and address it.
Over the last fourteen years I have been involved in the discovery and documentation of several cases of serial plagiarism in the humanities. In that context, I have experienced an increasing amount of harassment from plagiarists and their staunch supporters and enablers in the academy. I have received threatening emails (and submitted complaints about these to the relevant academic and civic authorities), and in a recent case (in which I successfully requested retractions for the published doctoral dissertation and a number of other extensively plagiarizing publications by a well-funded Romanian academic) I received a surprisingly manipulative cease-and-desist letter from the plagiarist's German lawyer. My academic whistleblower colleagues report of similar disgusting experiences. Is this tendency acceptable to the world of learning?
I could wish that the scourge of scholarly plagiarism were taken seriously and properly addressed by the scholarly communities – by ethical committees at universities and research institutions, by editors of humanities journals and book series, by academic publishers – and I could wish that research grants and university positions were always awarded on the basis of real scholarly merit, that is, on the basis of the quality of the scholarship as a contribution to the field in question - and never on the basis of the mere quantity of publications on a given CV.
Email address: p.harsting@nnrh.dk
(1) Publications on the problem of academic plagiarism
* "It's all too hard to get plagiarizing philosophy publications retracted", essay co-written with Michael V. Dougherty and published at DailyNous, March 23, 2023.
* "40 Cases of Plagiarism", article researched and written together with Michael V. Dougherty (Ohio) and Russell L. Friedman (Leuven), published in Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 51:2009 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 350-391.
(2) Publications on the history of rhetoric
* Review of Alessandro Daneloni: Poliziano e il testo dell'Institutio oratoria (Messina 2001), in Rhetorical Review: The Electronic Review of Books on the History of Rhetoric, 7:3 (October 2009), pp. 1-5.
* Rhetoric and Literature in Finland and Sweden, 1600-1900, Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric, vol. 2, ed. by Pernille Harsting and Jon Viklund (Copenhagen: Nordisk Netværk for Retorikkens Historie [NNRH], 2008), ISBN: 987-87-988829-1-6, 241 pages.
* Introduction on Cicero and Lucian to a special issue of Rhetorica Scandinavica on 'Rhetoric and Historiography': Minitema: Retorik og historieskrivning, ed. by Pernille Harsting = Rhetorica Scandinavica 28 (2003), pp. 4-33 (Introduction: pp. 4-8).
* "Melanchthon, epideiktisk retorik og lejlighedsdigtning i 1500-tallets Danmark", Rhetorica Scandinavica 24 (2002), pp. 35-49.
* Ten Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric, Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric, vol. 1, ed. by Pernille Harsting and Stefan Ekman (Copenhagen: Nordisk Netværk for Retorikkens Historie [NNRH], 2002), ISBN: 87-988829-0-2, 175 pages.
* "The Discovery of Late-Classical Epideictic Theory in the Italian Renaissance", in Pernille Harsting & Stefan Ekman (eds.),Ten Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric [= Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric vol. 1] (Copenhagen: NNRH, 2002), pp. 39-53.
* "Marcus Fabius Quintilianus om efterligning og om originalitet. Indledning til og dansk oversættelse af Institutio oratoria X.2", [in the web journal] Aigis 1:2 (Copenhagen: Institute for Greek and Latin, 2001), 5+5 pages.
* "More Evidence of Menander Rhetor on the Epithalamium: Angelo Poliziano's Transcription in the Statius Commentary (1480-81), Re-edited with a Discussion of the Manuscript Sources and Earlier Editions", Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin (= CIMAGL) 72 (Copenhagen 2001), pp. 11-34. (With text edition.)
* "More Evidence of the Earliest Translation of Menander Rhetor on the Monody", CIMAGL 70 (Copenhagen 1999), pp. 3-12. (With text edition.)
* "Quintilian, Imitation, and 'Anxiety of Influence'", in Quintiliano: Historia y Actualidad de la Retórica, ed. by Tomás Albaladejo (Logroño 1998), pp. 1325-1336.
* "Two Renaissance Translations of Menander Rhetor on the Monody. Edited with a Note on the Introduction of the Genre in the Latin West", CIMAGL 67 (Copenhagen 1997), pp. 13-32. (With text edition.)
* "The Golden Method of Menander Rhetor. The Translations and the Reception of the peri epideiktikon in the Italian Renaissance", ARID 20 (Rome: Bretschneider, 1994), pp. 139-157. (With text edition.)
* "The Work of Menander Rhetor in Italy in the Renaissance: The First Translation?", Res publica litterarum 14 (Kansas 1991) and Studi Umanistici Piceni 11 (Sassoferrato 1991), pp. 69-73. (With text edition.)
(3) Publications on Neo-Latin language and literature
* "What's in A Title Page? Title-Page Topics of Neo-Latin Epithalamia Printed in Sixteenth-Century Denmark", in Stefan Ekman et al. (eds.), Den litterära textens förändringar. Studier tillägnade Stina Hansson (Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 2007), pp. 230-240.
* "Jacobus Jacobaeus Volfius: Carmen in nuptias Jacobi VI Regis Scotiae et Annae (1589), Edited with a Study of the Autograph Sources", Humanistica Lovaniensia 50 (Leuven 2001), pp. 329-349. (With text edition.)
* "Four Autograph Poems by Jacobus Jasparus Danus (fl. 1529-1549) Discovered in the Vatican Library*, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 27 (Rome 2001), pp. 151-160. (With text edition.)
* The articles on "Jacob Jespersen" and "Jacob Jacobsen Wolf", in John Chr. Jørgensen (ed.), Dansk Forfatterleksikon (Copenhagen: Gyldendal/Rosinante, 2001), pp. 224 and 496-497.
* "From Melanchthonism to Mannerism: The Development of the Neo-Latin Wedding Poem in 16th Century Denmark", in Chloe. Beihefte zum Daphnis 32 = Humanismus im Norden. Frühneuzeitliche Rezeption antiker Kultur und Literatur an Nord-und Ostsee, ed. by Thomas Haye (Amsterdam 2000), pp. 289-318. (With text edition.)
* "'Should One Marry?' On the Use of a Classical Rhetorical Theme in Early Lutheran Wedding Poetry", Classica et Mediaevalia 50 (Aarhus 1999), pp. 273-286. (With text edition.)
* "Peder Palladius' forord til Grammatica Latina in Usum Danicae Iuventutis Uniformitatis Causa (1552)", in M. S. Christensen et al. (eds.), Hvad tales her om? Festskrift til Johnny Christensen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1996), pp. 367-373. (With text edition.)
* "Latin Valedictory Poems of the 16th Century. Tradition and Topicality of a Classical Genre", in Minna Skafte Jensen (ed.), A History of Nordic Neo-Latin Literature (Odense 1995), pp. 203-218. (With text edition.)
* Nicolai Perotti, Cornu copiae seu linguae Latinae commentariae, vol. 5, text critical edition by J.-L. Charlet and P. Harsting (Sassoferrato 1995), 257 pages. (Text edition.)
* "Jacobus Jasparus (fl. 1529-1549): 'Homerulus noster Danicus'", in Jean Moss et al. (eds.) Acta Conventus Neolatini Hafniensis (Binghamton, NY 1994), pp. 465-476. (With text edition.)
* "Epitalami latini della riforma in Danimarca (1536-1590): Imitazione classica e rappresentazione luterana", Res publica litterarum 15 (Kansas 1992) and Studi Umanistici Piceni 12 (Sassoferrato 1992), pp. 97-106. (With text edition.)
Last update: April 2, 2023