Position Title
Professor of Classics
Chair of Graduate Designated Emphasis
Education and Degree(s):
- Ph.D., Duke University, 2005
- M.A., Duke University, 2000
- M.St., Oxford University, 1996
- B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995
About
Research Interests:
- Late ancient social and intellectual history; conceptions of the natural and the wondrous in antiquity
- Literary cultures of late antiquity and the early middle ages
- Performance, ritual, and performing objects in late antiquity
- Premodern notions of gender, sexuality, and the body
Courses Taught:
- CLA 003 Rome and the Ancient Mediterranean World
- CLA 004 Late Antiquity
- CLA 190 (senior seminar) Race and Classical Antiquity
- CLA 200A The World is Old: Approaches to the Classical Past
- LAT 112 Cicero
- LAT 130 Later Latin
- RST/JST 40 New Testament
- RST 102 Christian Origins
- IST 8C Religion and the Cosmos: Plato to C.S. Lewis
Profile:
I'm interested in how late ancient people imagined their world(s), and in the techniques they used--scientific, artistic, literary, religious--to more fully describe and inhabit the worlds that they imagined living in. I'm also interested in how we can re-imagine those worlds today, and so my work explores different techniques that we can use, from literary composition to installation art to puppetry and object performance, in order to have a contemporary version of the kinds of imaginative experiences that late ancient people had.
Please Note: I am not accepting graduate students at this time.
Policy on Letters of Recommendation
Selected Publications:
Life: The Natural History of An Early Christian Universe, Oakland: University of California Press, 2024 (link)
"After Post, or, Animal Religion in an Age of Extinction," Ancient Jew Review, May 29, 2018 (link)
"Marvelous Things Heard: On Finding Historical Radiance," The Massachusetts Review 58.3 (2017): 478-91 (pdf)
Melania: Early Christianity Through the Life of One Family, co-edited with Caroline T. Schroeder, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016
Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History, co-edited with Moulie Vidas, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015
Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.