2008
Ilaria Marchesi Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature Classics Program, Director
A study of the relationship between Pliny’s text and his literary models
2015
Can the otherness of the past help us understand and embrace diversity in the present? Can ancient literature become the place to imagine alternatives to the world as we know it? Is it possible to use the teaching of a dead language to foster literacy and a deeper understanding of communication? These questions are the core of my latest research. After working on Latin literature, culture and Roman social history for twenty years, I am taking a step back to reflect on the value and worth of the discipline that I have practiced thus far. I now study what practices can best serve those values and have the potential not only to reach but also to serve the needs of a wider audience. I believe the study of ancient societies, cultures and literatures provides valid responses for our needs to read more critically the documents of our age, to speak our minds more clearly, to write our thoughts more effectively, and process the dramas and traumas of our lives through the works of the ancients.
Research Interests Intertextuality in Latin Literature Latin pedagogy Pompeii and Herculaneum
2016 Four days in Pompeii with grammar school children: A pedagogical experiment in situ
A collective work on what it meant to publish a collection of letters in the Roman world