Sam graduated cum laude from the University of Washington in the spring of 2008 with B.A.s in Classics, Latin, and English Literature and entered the Ph.D. program at Penn in the fall. His interests range from the linguistic — specifically the phonological and morphological developments of Latin's early Indo-European ancestors and relatives as they pass through the Archaic and Classical periods and continue on to the modern Romance diaspora — and the literary, under which heading would be included such topics as the development of distinctly Roman forms of Greek models (epic poetry in particular), satire as an innovation uniquely Roman, and the creation, commerce, and dedication of writing as it occurred in social and literary circles of the late Roman Republic. He intends to integrate material evidence into his philological studies as well, and has particular interest in the use of epigraphy and paleography as a means of identifying and reconciling phonological change in Latin and later Romance languages. Sam enjoys writing in the third person.

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Caroline Bishop received her B.A. from Rhodes College in (Greek and Roman Studies, Women's Studies) in 2005. Her current research interests lie broadly in the field of ancient literary criticism and intellectual history. She is particularly interested in the way in which canonical texts were created and understood in antiquity. These interests have led to a focus on ancient scholarship, ancient allegoresis, and reception (both of texts and authors) in antiquity. Her dissertation, a synchronic examination of Cicero and the commentary tradition, reflects these interests. She looks both at Cicero's possible use of Greek exegetical material and at later Latin commentaries on Cicero's works. Her committee consists of Joseph Farrell (director), Rita Copeland, and James Ker. Caroline is also interested in issues of women and gender in antiquity, and, more generally, in the application of feminist and other critical theory in the field of classical studies. She has benefitted in this regard from her graduate group's strong ties with the Comparative Literature and Literary Theory grad group and seeks to apply this interdisciplinarity in her own work.

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John Paul received his B.A. in Greek from Swarthmore College in 2001. in 2002-2003 he was a a Rotary Academic Ambassadorial Fellow at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and in 204 he entered the Ph.D. program at Penn. In his dissertation ("Writing to Power: Tyrant and Sage in Ancient Greek Epistolography," directed by Sheila Murnaghan) he is examining the many approaches taken within the epistolary genre to the concept of the archaic and classical tyrant, especially the tyrant's relationship to traditional "wisdom figures" (archaic/classical poets, philosophers, and sages), and the role of tyrants as authors. More broadly, his interests include archaic Greek poetry and its modern reception, Greek hymns and their performance (esp. choral dance), and Senecan drama.

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Ginna Closs earned a B.A. in Classics from Stanford University in 2000, and an M.Phil in Classical archaeology from Cambridge University in 2002. She entered the Ph.D. program at UPenn in 2008. While at Stanford, she at the archaeological field school on Cyprus and at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. While at Cambridge, she served for two seasons as graduate assistant of Cambridge excavations on the Palatine Hill. Her findings and drawings were included in the site report that was recently published. During summer 2005, Ginna worked in Rome and Ravenna on excavations of the imperial harbor at Classe as part the American Academy in Rome's Summer Program in Archaeology. In 2006, she participated in a two-week NEH-funded summer seminar at University of California at Los Angeles, focused on using digital media and computer models as teaching tools for ancient studies. From 2003 until 2008 Ginna taught Latin, first at Sacred Heart Preparatory in Atherton, CA and then at Trinity School in New York City. Her current research interests include text and image, memory in epigraphy and monuments, conceptions of space in Latin literature, ancient science, uses of technology for research and classroom teaching, and pedagogy.

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Classical Studies Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania, 2004 - present

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Heather earned a B.A. in Greek and Latin from Knox College in 2007 and an M.A. in Classics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2009. She entered the Penn Ph.D. program that same year. Her research interests lie in the fields of Latin literature and gender studies. Heather's work is particularly focused on Latin of the imperial period -- especially the genre of Roman satire. This interest has taken her from an undergraduate thesis on performance and immorality in Juvenal's second and sixth satires to a Master's thesis on literary rivalry between Juvenal and other Roman writers. Heather's other interests include the economics of Greek and Roman prostitution and reception studies.

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Matthew earned a B.A. in Greek and Latin at Tufts University in 2006 and an M.A. in Greek, Latin and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College in 2008. He is interested in all varieties of Greek poetry, particularly archaic lyric and epic, and drama. His undergraduate thesis related the poetry of Archilochus, and the stories surrounding his life, to trends in invective poetry throughout Indo-European cultures; he continues to be interested in the dynamics of invective in Greek poetry, particularly in the works of Archilochus, Hipponax, and Aristophanes. Other authors of particular interest include Homer, Pindar, and the Attic tragedians; his master's thesis was on the "Prometheus Bound." Matthew hopes after the eventual completion of his work at Penn to pursue a career in teaching and research.

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Jen received a B.A. in Ancient History at Vassar College in 2005. She continued her studies in Penn's Post-baccalaureate Program until she entered the CLST Graduate Group in 2007. Her research is focused on historiography, ancient biography, and ethnographic digressions (particularly in Caesar and Tacitus). Upcoming or ongoing projects include work on IG 2² 334 (on the lesser Panathenaia), Tacitus' digression on the Jews in Book 5 of the Historiae, and Plutarch's adaptation of Thucydidean source material in the Lives of Perikles, Nikias, and Alkibiades.

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Caitlin received an A.B. (Classics, Latin) from Harvard University in 2005 and an M.St. (Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures) from Wadham College, Oxford, in 2006. She continued her studies at the University of Chicago's Graham School of General Studies during the following year before entering the Penn Ph.D. program in 2007. Her research focus is on issues of women and gender in antiquity. This interest has taken her from an undergraduate thesis on Ovid's Heroides to a master's dissertation on Ovid's Tristia through to her current work on the women of Tacitus' Annals. She continues to expand a parallel interest in ancient theater through work on the tragic female in Greek drama, and plans to concentrate on the figure of Medea in future projects.

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Anna earned a B.A. in Classics from Clare College, Cambridge in 2008 and an M.A. in Classics from Kings College London in 2009. She entered the Penn Ph.D. program the same year. Anna's primary research focus at present is in Latin poetry. Her undergraduate thesis explored ideas of voice and identity in Ovid's Metamorphoses, followed by a Masters' dissertation on power relations in Ovid's Heroides. She intends to explore further the concept of Roman identity in other poets, especially relating to the conventions of the epic genre. Authors of especial interest beyond Ovid are Virgil, Lucan and Statius.

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Charles Ham earned a B.A. in Classical Languages from Grand Valley State University in 2006 and entered the Penn Ph.D. program in 2007. His main interests center upon the question of literature's relationship to its non-literary context. He is interested especially in the epistemological value of literature in the ancient world and in how ancient assessments of this value formed and changed through time. This interest has led Charles to the study of didactic poetry, and, in particular, Latin didactic, with the aim of examining the tension between its generic and social constituents. He continues more and more, however, to be drawn to examining such questions in genres of poetry that make no explicit claims about knowledge. One of the more interesting phenomena to him in literary history is the growing sphere of "imaginative" literature. Works, both ancient and modern, that began as philosophical or historical have slid into this category, but the shifting is unidirectional, that is, one rarely sees "poetic" works later considered as anything else. He intends to examine possible sources for this in ancient conceptions of genre and the epistemological value of literature.

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Paul received his B.A. from Willamette University in 1999 with a major in English and a minor in Mathematics. He studied at the Harvard Extension School from 2001 - 2005, at St. Tikhon's Orthodox Seminary in 2005 - 2006, and in Penn's Post-baccaluareate Program in CLST during 2007 - 2008. Paul entered the Penn Ph.D. program the following year. He is interested in the poetic expression of ideas in Greek epic and tragedy, especially conceptions of virtue and the good life. More particularly, he is curious how suitable an Aristotelian notion of telos is to explaining duty and social roles, and how inclusion and exclusion were used to establish meaning and promote social cohesion. One lens for this study could be Greek ideas of a good death and how they dealt with aging. Paul is also interested in classical approaches to knowledge and literary interpretation. How did the Greeks evaluate the veracity of knowledge claims? How did they argue for a text's meaning? For instance, he would like to study the Homeric tradition of allegorical interpretation and textual criticism and to investigate how this tradition influenced early Christian approaches to the biblical canon.

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Joanna graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT in 2008, where she earned a B.A. in Classics and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She also studied at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome in Spring 2007. She entered Penn's post-baccalaureate program in Classical Studies in 2008 and the Ph.D. program in 2009. For now her main interest is the intellectual history of the Roman Republic and early Principate, but she also hopes to explore Greek tragedy in the future.

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Michael earned a B.A. in Classics from the University of Toronto in 1987, and an M.A. from the University of Toronto in 1988. He entered the Penn Ph.D. program in 1988 and earned an M.A. from Penn in 1991. His main interests are Latin historiography, late antiquity, chronography, and paedagogy. In his dissertation, directed by Richard W. Burgess at the University of Ottawa, Michael is preparing a new text and the first full-scale study of Cassiodorus' Chronica, a universal history written in 519 C.E. He demonstrates how Cassiodorus' work, far from being hastily prepared and not particularly noteworthy, is a serious and carefully constructed chronographical study designed both to support the Ostrogothic regime in Italy, and to produce an authoritative consular list from 509 B.C.E. to 519 C.E. at a time when there were many lists of varying quality in circulation. Between 1995 and 2005 Michael was a member of the Classics department of the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania, during which time he co-authored the New First Steps in Latin textbook series and served a five-year term as department chair. He currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

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Marian holds a B.A. in Classics (2002) and an M.A. in Latin (2003) from Columbia University. She entered the Penn Ph..D. program in 2004. Her dissertation, "Reading and Writing Ancient Battlefields" (Committee: Sheila Murnaghan (director), Cynthia Damon, Emily Wilson), grew out of a desire to answer three related questions: What significance did the ancient Romans attach to a battlefield after the battle was over? What can we learn, from narrative accounts such as those found in Lucan and Tacitus, about the importance of battlefields and battlefield visits in the Roman literary imagination? And to what extent can we find continuity in modern artistic representations of visits to ancient battlefields? To address these questions, she is combining close readings of the literary episodes and broader thematic discussions with historical and archaeological evidence, contemporary studies of tourism and commemoration, and various theoretical approaches (e.g., narratology, reception theory, feminist criticism).

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Carrie earned a B.A. in Classics from Smith College in 2002, where she wrote an honors thesis on the cult of Isis in Latin literature. Following graduation, she taught Latin and Classical Studies at the secondary level and entered the Penn Ph.D. program in 2006. Carrie's main interests lie in Latin poetry (especially Ovid and Senecan drama), Attic tragedy, and ancient religion. She recently completed a project on the metaliterary implications of Medea's concern with her doxa in the Euripidean tragedy and is at present working on Ovid's Fasti. She enjoys teaching Latin at all levels and is currently co-teaching a Post-bac Latin course.

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Jason holds a B.A. (Classics and Italian, with minors in German and French) from the University of Texas at Austin (2006) and an M.Phll in Classics from the University of Cambridge (2007). He entered the Penn Ph.D. program that same year. My main interest is Greek and Roman epic and didactic poetry, especially during the imperial period, but he also has interests in Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman philosophy. While particularly interested in post-Vergilian epic ekphrasis and its relationship with Imperial art and sculpture, he would like to pursue the influence of the ancient novel on the Gospels in the New Testament and Vergil's use of Tragedy, mainly Attic, but also the fragments of Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius, in the Aeneid.

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Eduardo earned a B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Kappa Phi) in Classics from the University of Houston in 2009, where he wrote an Honors Thesis on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Eleusinian Mysteries. He matriculated into the PhD program that same year. His main area of interest is achaic greek poetry, especially Homer and the Homeric Hymns. He is also interested in marriage in antiquity and its ancient cultic affiliations, and in modern cinematic adaptations of ancient tragedy.

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Sarah Scullin earned a B.A. (Classics and Latin, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from The University of Texas at Austin in 2005. She entered the Penn Ph.D. program in 2006. Sarah's main interests are Greco-Roman Medicine and Philosophy, with particular interest in Greek conceptions and perceptions of pleasure, pain and emotion. She has presented her research in papers on "The Curative Function of Pain in Childbirth and Lamentation" (Fourth Biennial Graduate Student Conference, Department of Classics, Harvard University, 2008) and "The Roles of Eilithuia and Delos in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo" (140th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, Philadelphia, 2009).

Emlen earned a B.A. in Classical Studies and English from Yale University in 2003, and an M.A. from Penn in 2008. He entered the Penn Ph.D. program in 2005. His main interests are in late republican and Augustan Latin poetry, and particularly in Ovid. Emlen is currently writing a dissertation on the subject of "Names and Naming in Ovid's Exile Poetry" (with a committee including Joseph Farrell, Cynthia Damon, and Emily Wilson), which will explore the use and avoidance of personal names in the Tristia, Ibis, and Epistulae ex Ponto; the overall purpose of the dissertation will be to examine the ways Ovid imagines his relationship with his readers, and deals with the question of who (whether reader or poet) controls the meaning of a poem. Emlen's other interests include classical tragedy and its modern reception (particularly in 17th-century France) and ancient philosophy.

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Alison earned a B.A. from Columbia University (2003) and an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin (2005), both in Classics, before entering the Penn Ph.D. program in 2005. Her main interest is in archaic Greek poetry and poetics, particularly the creation of genre and literary typologies in antiquity, which is the focus of the dissertation that she is writing under the direction of Sheila Murnaghan. She is also interested in the reception of ancient myths and stories in the modern world, and in linguistic analyses of ancient texts.

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Classical Studies Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania, 2003 - present
Postbaccalaureate Program in Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2000 - 2001

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Kathryn Wilson received a B.A. in History, magna cum laude, in 2006, from Amherst College, where she was awarded the William C. Collar and Hutchins Prizes in Greek. She also received an M. Litt. with Distinction, from the University of Saint Andrews in 2008, writing about Strabo's use of Homer and Eratosthenes. Her primary interests include ancient scientific and encyclopedic writing, Greek rhetoric, and Stoic cosmogony.

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