Colin Behrens is an late antique historian who specializes in Christian ecclesiastical politics. His dissertation, Orosius of Braga and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Fifth Century CE, offers the first political biography of Orosius. Rather than an overzealous partisan of Augustine and Jerome, Orosius was a skilled ecclesiastical entrepreneur working in partnership with Augustine and Jerome to further the interests of his church in Braga. Colin offers this new evaluation by drawing on the tools provided by political science, which allows him to more precisely analyze how theology and orthodoxy is constructed in ecclesiastical conflicts. Outside of his work on Orosius, Colin has published a paper on the Priscillianist controversy, and is preparing an article using cognitive science to examine how Donatist preaching can be categorized as violent or non-violent depending on the knowledge structures each individual audience member possesses. He is also interested in how Roman emperors intervened in religious controversies, and is currently focused on the reign of Honorius (395-423 CE).
Hana joined the PhD program on the Linguistics track in Fall 2019. After receiving her BA in Classics at Gettysburg College, she spent a year teaching English and Japanese in Yerevan, Armenia. She then completed her MA in Classical Languages at the University of Georgia, where she wrote her thesis “Translating the Gospel of Matthew, with a Case Study of Latin and Armenian Deixis.” Her current research interests include Indo-European linguistics and philology, ancient color, and translation.…
Claire Challancin received her BAsumma cum laudewith a double major in Classical Languages and Anthropology (Archaeology concentration) from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2019. She is a PhD candidate specializing in Mediterranean archaeology. Claire is interested in the sociocultural dynamics in Sicily in the Hellenistic-Republican period. Her dissertation focuses on epitymbia, monumental funerary structures commonly found in Hellenistic necropolises throughout the island, and what they reveal about the communities living on the island, connectivity, as well as cultural change and continuity. Claire has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Tuscany at the Santa Marta site with the University of Siena, and Baratti and Venturina Terme with the Soprintendenza of Pisa and Livorno. More recently, she has worked in Sicily at the Temple of Apollo at Halaesa with the University of Messina and Oxford University, and the agora of Morgantina with the Contrada Agnese Project and Agora Valley Project.
Evan is a PhD student in Classics concentrating in Greek and Latin Languages and Linguistics. He received a BA in Classics and Linguistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2020 and joined the Classics Department at Cornell in the fall of the same year. His main interest is the development of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Greek, beginning at its earliest stages and extending all the way up to Modern Greek.
Greek and Latin Languages and Linguistics Concentration
Mary C. Danisi is a postdoctoral associate of the Humanities Scholars Program. Her research specializes in issues of materiality and aesthetics in Greek art, literature, and religion. Her current projects address the generative interrelations between ancient visual and verbal media, as well as theoretical models of representation in antiquity. Her research has been supported by the Cornell Institute for Archaeological and Material Studies (CIAMS), Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Society for the Humanities, Lemmermann Foundation, and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. In 2024, she was the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
Samantha is a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell on the Philology track. She received her B.A. in Classics (2013) and her M.A. in Comparative Literature with a Classics concentration (2016) from the University of New Mexico. She is interested in all aspects of Greek and Roman comedy, particularly Terentian comedy and Roman social and political history. Other research interests include ancient drama more broadly, Old Latin, elegiac poetry, and satire.
Her dissertation will show that Terence’s plays draw…
Ethan joined the Classics department as a PhD student in the fall of 2020. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Chicago that same year, receiving a B.A. in both Classics (with honors) and Philosophy. He is interested in the intersection of literary form and philosophical thought, particularly in the works of Lucretius and Seneca. Other interests include the role of digital humanities within Classics as a tool for both research and education. During his time in Chicago, he worked…
Sarah received her B.A. in History summa cum laude from the Appalachian State University Honors College in 2017 and her M.A. in Classical Languages from the University of Georgia in 2019. Her Master's thesis conducted a study of the terms corpus, caro, spiritus, and anima in the works of Tertullian and analyzed their significance for understanding Tertullian's eucharistic theology. Sarah began the Classics Ph.D. program at Cornell in 2019. She plans to continue her work on Christian sacraments…
Stephen graduated magna cum laude from Florida State University in Spring 2020, receiving three B.A. degrees in Classics, Music, and English Literature. He joined the Cornell Classics department as a Ph.D. student in the Philology and Literature track in the fall of the same year. His honor’s thesis, “Homeric Songs: Oral Poetic Recitations and Musical Performances”, explored the musical aspects and oral nature of the Homeric epics with similar musical and oral poetic traditions. He is…
Kathleen received her BA in Classical Archaeology from Hampshire College in 2012 and completed the post-baccalaureate program in Classics at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015. She is currently in her third year on the archaeology track and focusing on labor, technology, and networks of exchange in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean. She has excavated in Greece, Israel, and Italy. Other interests include representations of capital and labor in text and image, and histories of…
Rebecca began the Classical Archaeology track in 2016. She holds a B.A. in Classics and Chemistry (Smith College ’15), and an M.Sc. in Archaeological Science (U. of Oxford ’16). Her work focuses on integrating archaeological and chemical approaches to study ancient food practices. In her dissertation research, she is developing new methods for analyzing food residues in ceramics that account for effects from the ancient Mediterranean environment, and new ways of interpreting organic residues to…
Isaac Hoffman graduated from Hofstra University with a B.A. in Classics and Latin in 2019. He is a PhD Candidate on the Philology track and currently working on a dissertation exploring flowers and plants as literary devices in Greek and Latin literature of the early Imperial period. He enjoys teaching and speaking Latin and exploring the boundaries between texts and objects.
Dante is a second-year Ph.D. student in Interdisciplinary Classics. In 2021, he earned his BA in Classical Languages magna cum laude from The College of Wooster and investigated foundation stories' influence on and interaction with early Roman imperial society in his Honors thesis, “Two Sides of the Same Coin: Vergil and Ovid’s Clashing Portrayals of Individual and Group Identity.” While Dante maintains a wide range of interests, he is most passionate about investigating the relationship…
Liam is a first year PhD student in Classics concentrating in Classical Archaeology. He received his BA (Hons) in Anthropology from the University of Auckland in 2014 and his MSc in Archaeological Science from the University of Oxford in 2016. He has worked in CRM archaeology in New Zealand and at the Auckland Museum. His research at Cornell will focus on dendrochronology and the radiocarbon calibration process. His other research interests include palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, human-…
Sara Merker is a first-year PhD student concentrating in Classical Philology and Literature. She graduated with Distinction from McGill University (2020), receiving a B.A. with First Class Honours in Honours Classics. During her undergraduate degree, Sara conducted archaeological fieldwork at the Salapia Exploration Project (Trinitapoli, Italy) and worked as a Research Assistant for Prof. Heidi Wendt (Religious Studies/Classical Studies) under an ARIA research grant. Sara aims to research the…
Andrew Merritt earned a B.A. in Classics from the University of Virginia in 2013 and in 2015 an M.Phil. in Classics from the University of Cambridge. In 2016 he entered the Ph.D. program with a concentration in Greek and Latin Linguistics. His interests comprise the historical and comparative grammar of Greek, Latin, and their relatives, Indo-European morphology and derivational semantics, lexical semantic change, Homeric Philology, and Archaic Greek Poetry. In 2020 the French Republic awarded…
Alessandro is a PhD student in the Ancient Philosophy concentration. He joined the Department of Classics after receiving his BA (2018) and MA (2020) in Classics from the University of Florence. During his MA, he also studied ancient philosophy and Indian philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2019-20). Besides ancient Greek and Latin philosophical texts, his interests include Indian philosophy and Sanskrit.
Ruth received her B.A. in Archaeology and Writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2016, and her M.A. in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies from Brandeis University in 2018. She is interested in the interactions between Eurasian mobile pastoralists and their neighbors in the Mediterranean and Black Sea Regions, with a focus on themes such as alterity, identity, interconnectivity and the processes of technological development. She has excavated in Spain, Israel, and Mongolia, and joined the…
Matthieu Réal is a classicist whose interests include Greek and Latin literature, ancient scholarship, ancient biographies, and the history of ancient Aristotelianism. His book project, The Greeks and Their Texts: Interpreting Poetry before Aristotle’s Poetics, investigates how the Classical audience interpreted Archaic poetry. Far from being pedantic and moralistic censors of literature, the readers of the Classical period exhibited a mastery of sophisticated exegetical techniques through which they skillfully interpreted —as well as willfully misinterpreted— poetry. By focusing on well-studied texts (Aristophanes’ Frogs and Plato’s Protagoras) as well as lesser-known ones (such as the fragments of Zoilus of Amphipolis, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, and the Derveni Papyrus), his book reimagines the “invention” of literary criticism in Greece. Already before Aristotle legitimized literary investigation in his Poetics, ancient readers had developed a keen eye for literature.
Emily Shanahan received her B.A. in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016, where she was the recipient of the Eben Alexander Prize in Greek. She began her PhD, philology track, in fall 2018. Her research interests include the transition from aurality to literacy in Greek literature, visual and phonetic word play, and Aratus. She is a co-founder of the graduate classics organization Diversitas and is open to questions via email from prospective students.…
Sophia received her B. Phil. from the University of Pittsburgh Honors College in Classics and History in 2015 with the thesis, "Not Just for the Birds: Augury and Archaic Attic Vase Painting." This paper served as the basis for a presentation at Prophets and Profits, XVI UNISA Classics Colloquium in the summer of 2015. She is in her first year of the PhD program on the Classical Archaeology track and is interested in divination, materiality of ancient religion, and the interaction between…
Belisarius is a PhD candidate specializing in Hellenistic poetry and science. He received his BSc in Mathematics in 2013 and his MA in Classical Languages in 2016 from the University of Alberta, Canada. His master’s thesis, entitled “Diophantus’ Arithmetica and the Hypatian Rescension”, considered possible traces of Hypatian influence in the presentation of Diophantus' proto-algebraic treatise, the Arithmetica. His dissertation focuses on the astronomical poem, the Phaenomena of Aratus of Soli…
Please join us this Friday, December 2 at 4:30 pm in Klarman Hall, room KG42 for presentations from three members of the Department of Classics in advance of the Archaeological Institute of America and Society for Classical Studies Annual Meetings.
Andrew Merrit: Etymology of χρώς 'surface, skin, color'
Olivia Graves: Evaluating Compensation for Working Women in the Roman Empire
Annetta Alexandridis: The Skulls of Apollo and Clytie: Teaching with Plaster Casts in Light of Classical Beauty's Fraught Legacy
A holiday reception will follow!
120 Goldwin Smith Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
United States
