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Research

Research Interests

Ancient Mediterranean history; youth and age in the Roman world; gender history and queer theory; ancient colonization, slavery, freedpersons, migration and displacement; Roman urban history and topography; Roman material culture and archaeology; memory studies; Latin epigraphy.

 

Current Research

 

Roman Youth and Power

Currently I am at work on my first monograph tentatively entitled, Youth and Power: Acting Your Age in the Roman Empire, 149 BCE – 79 CE. It takes age, specifically youth, as something that can be performed (i.e., “acting your age”, or not), much like gender, and traces how these performances changed over two hundred years, due to a whole range of historical factors, from demographic conditions to legal and artistic developments. I am also at work on a number of book chapters and articles arising from this project.

Related Papers:

  • “Same-Sex Rape in the Roman Military: Catullus (c. 15, 28) and the Poetics of Homosociality,” Ancient Rape Cultures: Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian, Institutum Romanum Finlandiae (The Finnish Institute in Rome), October 27-28, 2022.
  • “The Puer in the Princeps.” Respondent: Amy Richlin (UCLA). Lees Seminar, Rutgers University – Camden, March 25, 2022. [online]

  • Rome’s Next Generation: Youth Agency in the Late Republic and Augustan Age.” at Taking the lead in late Republican and early Imperial Rome: office, agency and initiative, University of Bielefeld, Germany, July 15-16, 2019.

  • “Upending Age Models: Octavian from puer to iuvenis.” at The Roman Civil Wars of 49-30 BCE: Analyzing the Breakdown of Models, The British School at Rome, Italy, July 22-24, 2019.

  • “Fashioning an imperial aetas: Nero’s portrait, the depositio barbae, and the Iuvenalia.” at Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting (January 4-7), Boston, January 5, 2018; Ages, Ageing, and Old Age in Greco-Roman Antiquity, VIII Arachne Conference, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, October 25-27, 2017.

  • “Growing the State: The cult of Iuventas in the Middle Republic and Augustan Rome.” at Religion and the State in Classical Greece and Rome, Princeton University, September 22-23, 2017.

Towards a Subaltern Topography of Ancient Rome:

Wayfinding, Spatial Identities and Urban Space

A second project, currently in its early stages, looks at non-elite spatial identities and modes of spatial perception in Roman urban contexts, as represented in both non-elite (primarily graffiti and inscriptions) and elite texts in conversation with archaeological contexts and visual media.

Related Papers:

  • Invited talks at Bryn Mawr College (2021), Princeton University (2021), University of Pennsylvania (2022), Warwick University (2023).

  • “Wayfinding among the Living and the Dead: Monuments, Prepositions and Spatial Identities at Rome.” at The Spatial Turn in Roman Studies II, Durham University, UK, December 2-3, 2020. [online]

  • “Street View: Monuments, Prepositions and the Creation of Spatial Identities at Rome.” at North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (NACGLE), Washington D.C., January 5-7, 2020.

Secondary Projects

  • The Plautine adulescens in the historical context of Middle Republican Rome.
  • The relationship between Roman colonization, slavery and freedpersons in the Middle Republican period at Rome and in the Italian peninsula.
  • The role of the “pygmy” or dwarf somatotype in Roman households, especially at Pompeii.
  • The changing relationship between the Roman villa and the magistracy of the aedile.
  • A co-edited volume on rethinking migration in antiquity.