RU Classics Alumni News

 

The Rutgers Classics PhD program has an outstanding placement record, and the Department is proud of our alums' contributions to the field of Classics. They hold positions at institutions across North America and in Europe, and their research and teaching interests span the ancient world.

Ilaria Marchesi

Liz Gloyn

Andrew Scott

Ryan Fowler

Debra Nousek

Gregory Golden

Benjamin Hicks

Lisa Whitlatch

Michael Johnson

Kristen Baxter

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Ilaria Marchesi

B.A., University of Florence; Ph.D., Rutgers (2002)
Dissertation: "A complex prose: the poetics of allusion in the epistles of Pliny the Younger"
Associate Professor of Classics & Comparative Lit., Hofstra University

Ilaria is an expert on the Latin literature of the early empire, in particular Pliny and Martial. For her work on Pliny, which she started in graduate school at Rutgers between 1997 and 2002, she received a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant. Her book on intertextuality in the letters of Pliny the Younger, The Art of Pliny's Letters (2008) participated in the renewal of Pliny studies, contributing to the shift toward literary analyses of his work. She is also editor of a book of essays on Pliny that focuses on the philological, literary, historical and cultural implications of the book-form that Pliny designed for his collected letters. Her current research takes a socio-cultural perspective on Martial's Epigrams and identifies a unifying social and cultural concern: to respond to the need every society has to provide itself with a codified set of symbolic associations accompanying and giving meaning to the central elements in its collective life. The poetry of the Epigrams is for her the site in which the poet defined, constructed, and defended his role as self-appointed 'guardian of signs' in the society for which he wrote.

At Hofstra, she is Director of the Classics Program in the Department of Comparative Literature and Languages. She teaches Latin at all levels and classical literature in translation, and her staple set of courses ranges from Latin Language to the poets of the Augustan age, from the Roman Novel to Sex and Gender in the Ancient World, to Roman Social History, in particular through the study of the city of Pompeii.
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Liz Gloyn

M.A., Cambridge University; M.Phil., Cambridge University; Ph.D., Rutgers (2011)
Dissertation: "The ethics of the family in Seneca"
Lecturer in Classics, Royal Holloway, University of London

Liz is in the process of finishing her book manuscript, which expands her PhD thesis on Seneca's ethics of the family in his philosophy. Once that is complete, she plans to begin work on Seneca's tragedies, to see how the family is portrayed in those texts and what influence Stoic ethics might have in its depiction. She is also working on a book chapter examining the provision of classics teaching at Newnham College, Cambridge, between 1882 and 1922; she hopes to eventually use the rich archives of Royal Holloway to explore the distinctive nature of classics teaching in the UK during the expansion of higher education for women.
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Andrew Scott

B.A., College of the Holy Cross (MA); Ph.D., Rutgers (2008)
Dissertation: "Change and Discontinuity within the Severan Dynasty: The Case of Macrinus"
Assistant Professor, Villanova University, PA

Andrew is an ancient historian currently working on a commentary on books 78-80 of Cassius Dio's Roman history as part of the Dio Project, which aims to produce commentaries for the entirety of Dio's Roman history. He has published articles on issues in Dio's contemporary history and on aspects of Spartan social history.

He teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, primarily on Greek and Roman history and historiography; a particular favorite is a course on ancient Sparta.
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Ryan Fowler

B.A., University of Arizona; M.A., San Francisco State University; Columbia University; Ph.D., Rutgers 2008.
Dissertation: "The Platonic Rhetor in the Second Sophistic"
Sunoikisis Curricular Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Franklin and Marshall College

Ryan has two completed book manuscripts in press: The Imperial Plato (forthcoming [April 2014], Parmenides Press), and Plato in the Third Sophistic (forthcoming [May 2014], De Gruyter Publishing).

Ryan is involved with a range of CHS Sunoikisis courses, including Greek lyric (with Gregory Nagy, Harvard), Early Republican Literature (with Niall Slater, Emory), Greek Comedy (with Jeff Rusten, Cornell) and Latin literature of the Late Republic (with T. Corey Brennan, Rutgers). He has developed a liberal arts version of Professor Greg Nagy's HeroesX course that will be taught by a small consortium of colleges and universities, and will himself be teaching the course online through the University of Southern Maine. He has also delivered a paper ("Advanced Greek and Latin in a Limited, Personalized Online Setting") on the use of online technology in a panel called "Moving toward a (Responsible) Hybrid/Online Greek Major: the Potential Impact of Enhanced MOOCs on Classics Departments" at the APA Annual Meeting.
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Debra Nousek

B.A., University of Alberta; M.A., U.C. Santa Barbara; Ph.D., Rutgers (2004)
Dissertation: "Narrative style and genre in Caesar's Bellum Gallicum"
Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario

Debra's research focuses on literary approaches to Latin historiography. Current projects include a book-length project that treats the full Corpus Caesarianum in the context of the development of Latin historiography and intellectual culture in the late Republic and a project that seeks to create a digital map of Cicero's experience of Rome by cataloguing references to topographical details in Cicero's works and linking the textual and visual resources.

She regularly teaches Latin and Roman history, including a new seminar on the Life and Legacy of Julius Caesar, which examines both ancient and modern receptions of Caesar.
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Gregory Golden

B.A., University of Pennsylvania; M.Litt., Oxford University; M.A., University of Chicago; Ph.D., Rutgers (2008)
Dissertation: "Emergency Measures: Crisis and Response in the Roman Republic (from the Gallic Sack to the Tumultus of 43 BC)"
Assistant Professor, Rhode Island College

Greg is a Roman historian, whose current research looks at the ability of the Roman government at the end of the Republic and into the early Empire to be able to disseminate political messages throughout the areas of Roman control. He's especially interested in what wide-area "broadcast" media were available to the Romans to use to spread propaganda, from inscriptions to coins to more ephemeral means (white boards, heralds, and such).

He teaches a first-year seminar "Twice-Told Tales: Ancient Stories in Modern Retellings" in which students compare modern works on the ancient world, like the movies Troy or 300, with the original accounts from the ancient world and examine the differences and see what they tell us about our modern world. He also enjoys teaching upper level surveys on ancient Greece and Rome.
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Benjamin Hicks

B.A., Washington and Lee; Ph.D., Rutgers (2012)
Dissertation: "The Process of Imperial Decision-Making from Augustus to Trajan"
Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Alabama

Ben, a Roman historian, is currently working on his book, Emperor and Governor: Case Studies in the Decision-Making Process from Augustus to Diocletian. It uses the case-study as a vehicle to examine the dynamics between emperors and governors as the Roman imperial system developed, and its presentation of related primary texts in translation with commentary is meant to make the work accessible both to those in the field of ancient history and to scholars more broadly.

His teaching includes Rome under the Shadow of Vesuvius, an interdisciplinary look at Roman society, literature, and material culture from the years AD 69-96, and ancient athletics—a popular choice at AlaB.A.,ma!
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Lisa Whitlatch

B.A., Trinity University, San Antonio TX; Ph.D., Rutgers (2013)
Dissertation: "The Hunt for Knowledge: Hunting in Latin Didactic Poets"
Visiting Assistant Professor, Trinity University, San Antonio TX

Lisa is preparing her recent dissertation, an exploration of the hunting motif in Lucretius, Ovid, Vergil, Grattius and Nemesianus for publication.

She teaches a range of Latin literature courses, including Literary Classics of the Roman World, in which she pursues some of her favorite questions about genre and truth from the end of the Republic to the Age of Augustus.
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Michael Johnson

B.A., Truman State; M.A., UNC-Chapel Hill; FAAR '07; Ph.D., Rutgers (2008)
Dissertation: "The Pontifical Law of the Roman Republic"

Michael teaches at St. Louis Priory, an all boy prep school in Missouri run by Benedictine monks who originally came here (in the 1950s) from Ampleforth Abbey in North Yorkshire. Latin is required for the first 3 years, and the school has 5 classics teachers. Michael enjoys teaching Latin and Greek at all levels and a Greek and Roman history class. The Priory has a strong Rutgers Classics connection: the 2nd scarlet knight is the Classics chair, Matthew Holms, now Brother Dunstan (Rutgers, B.A. 2006).
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Kristen Baxter

B.A. Villanova University; Ph.D., Rutgers (2012)
Dissertation: "Pindar the Pious Poet: Prayer and its Significance in Pindar's Epinician Odes"
Lecturer, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Pennsylvania State University

A scholar of Greek literature, Kristen is currently working on a project with Rutgers Classics Professor emeritus Lowell Edmunds that studies the epithets of Helen in archaic Greek poetry. She has also begun to convert her dissertation into articles for publication.

She teaches a variety of courses, including both Greek and Roman Civilization, and among her favorites are upper-level Greek courses on Sophocles and Lysias.

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Other alumni of our PhD program include:

Karen Klaiber Hersch (2002), Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, Temple University
Lawrence Kowerski (2003), Associate Professor of Classics, Hunter College (CUNY)
Sean Jensen (2010), Instructor, Modern & Classical Languages, University of Southern Indiana
Kathleen Shea (2011), Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities & Classics, Whitman College