Paula Debnar's book, Speaking the Same Language: Speech and Audience in Thucydides' Spartan Debates, focuses on political speeches in the History of the Peloponnesian War, with special attention paid to the role of rhetoric in creating a sense of ethnic identity. Her analysis of speeches also traces the gradual collapse of the antithesis between Athenians and Spartans with which Thucydides structures his account of the lengthy conflict.

Debnar's article "Fifth-Century Athenian History and Greek Tragedy" appears in A Companion to Greek Tragedy (2005), and she co-authored the chapter "Sparta and the Spartans in Thucydides" in Brill's Companion to Thucydides (2006). Forthcoming in Classical Philology is "The Sexual Status of Aeschylus' Cassandra." She is currently working on Antiphon and revising her Greek textbook to be incorporated in a fourth edition of Pharr's Homeric Greek.

In addition to teaching Greek and Latin language and literature at all levels, Debnar offers a variety of courses on the ancient Mediterranean taught in English, including "Gods and Mortals: Myth in Ancient Art and Literature," "The Athenian Empire," and writing intensive first-year seminars on the ancient Greek world (e.g., "Homer's Iliad: A Big Fat Ancient Greek War?" and "Socratic Questions").