PhD, Stanford University, 2008
Books:
Rethinking Roman Alliance: A Study in Poetics and Society (Cambridge 2016)
Rethinking Roman Alliance is a cultural reconstruction of the processes, contexts, and tensions inherent in the performance of ritual alliances. Such alliances are not merely restricted to international relations between Rome and another polity, but they permeate not only the stratified codes of conduct throughout Roman society, but they also bring order and coherence to the cosmos. Each moment of alliance pushes and pulls on all prior alliances in each of their various social and cosmological spheres. The manuscript completely alters modern conceptions of Roman alliance in the study and evaluation of a broad range of prose and poetic works. In particular Lucretius, Vergil, Manilius, and Lucan all engage with the poetry of alliance from differing perspectives that open a window into the nature of Roman culture and society. Roman narratives about alliance raise fundamental questions about the tension inherent in forming unions within an empire and a highly competitive social environment.听
奥补濒办颈苍驳听through Elysium: Vergil's Underworld and听the Poetics of Tradition听(Gladhill and Myers eds., Toronto 2020)
Walking through Elysium stresses the subtle and intricate ways writers across time and space wove Vergil鈥檚 underworld in Aeneid 6 into their works. These allusions operate on many levels, from the literary and political to the religious and spiritual. Aeneid 6 reshaped prior philosophical, religious, and poetic traditions of underworld descents, while offering a universalizing account of the spiritual that could accommodate prior as well as emerging religious and philosophical systems. Vergil鈥檚 underworld became an archetype, a model flexible enough to be employed across genres, and periods, and among differing cultural and religious contexts.听The essays in this volume speak to Vergil鈥檚 incorporation of and influence on literary representations of underworlds, souls, afterlives, prophecies, journeys, and spaces, from sacred and profane to wild and civilized, tracing the impact of Vergil鈥檚 underworld on authors such as Ovid, Seneca, Statius, Augustine, and Shelley, from Pagan and Christian traditions through Romantic and Spiritualist readings. Walking through Elysium asserts the deep and lasting influence of Vergil鈥檚 underworld from the moment of its publication to the present day.
Songs of Mourning in Roman Culture (in progress)
Songs of Mourning in Roman Culture听reconstruct lost genres of Roman women鈥檚 songs known as neniae.听Neniae听reflect听an听oral song culture passed down by women singers. Mothers sang them over their babies. Daughters sang them over their dead fathers and mothers. Professional female singers (praeficae) would sing them in order to aid the mourning women in the dirge. The music of reed instruments buzzed in the background. The singing women scratched their faces, pulled out their hair, and beat their chests. All of this was part of neniae. A Roman audience would have construed all lamentations as moving in and through the tradition of neniae, whether they were found in Roman Epic, Tragedy, Lyric, Elegy, or epitaphs. This study recovers this听genre and examines its literary, social, and cultural influence.
Articles and Chapters
"Inside-out and the problem of Vergilian binaries" (in progress) 听
"Organs of Perception and History in Herodotus" (in progress).
"Ovid's听Fasti听and Narrative Hyperbaton" (in progress).
"峒�蟻蟽蔚谓慰胃萎位蔚喂蟼 esse omnes deos: Man-Woman in Greek and Latin Theology" (in progress).
鈥淎rms, Men, and Elegizing the Dead in Vergil and Statius鈥� (in progress).
"Elegizing the Roman Dirge," in Vergil and Elegy, Keith and Myers, eds.听(2023) 139-156.
鈥淚nto the Maw: Melville and the Classical Tradition鈥� in Latin Poetry and its Reception: Essays for Susanna Braund, C.W. Marshall, ed.听(2021).
鈥渕ortem aliquid ultra est: Vergil鈥檚 Underworld in Senecan Tragedy鈥� in Walking Through Elysium. Gladhill, Myers eds. (2020).
鈥淭iberius on Capri and the Limits of Roman Sex Culture,鈥澨�Eugesta听8 (2018)听184-202.
"Kronos, Zeus and Cheating Polysemy in the Succession Myth in Hesiod鈥檚听Theogony,鈥澨�Electra听4 (2018)听35-50
鈥淲omen from the Rostra,鈥� in听Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions.听Gray, Balbo,听Marshall and Steel (eds.). Oxford: 2018: 297-308.
鈥淪ubversive Khoreia in Plato鈥檚 Protagoras,鈥� ICS (2014)
鈥淒omus of Fama and Republican Space in Ovid鈥檚 Metamorphoses,"听in Augustan Poetry听in the Roman Republic, J. Farrel and D. Nelis eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
鈥淭he Poetics of Human Sacrifice in Vergil鈥檚 Aeneid鈥� in Human Sacrifice: Its Representation in a Cross-Cultural Perspective, a special edition of Kernos, edited by Pierre Bonnechere (University of Leige, 2013).
Vergil Encyclopedia entries: Antonio da Firenze, Arae, Altars, Ants, Insects, Richard Heinze, Treaty, Blessed Isles, Oaths, Mettius Fufetius (Harvard University Press, 2013).
鈥淭he Emperor鈥檚 No Clothes: Suetonius and the Dynamics of Corporeal Ecphrasis,鈥� CA 31 (2012) 315-48.
鈥淪ons, Mothers, and Sex: Aeneid 1.314-20 and the Hymn to Aphrodite Reconsidered,鈥� Vergilius 58 (2012) 159-168.
鈥淕ods, Caesars, and Fate in Aeneid 1 and Metamorphoses 15,鈥� Dictynna 9 (2012) 1-17.
鈥淭he Poetics of Alliance in Vergil鈥檚 Aeneid,鈥� Dictynna 6 (2009) 36-69.