Students
Below are profiles of students currently enrolled in the Ph.D. Program in Classics.
Click here for recent alumni
Johanna Braff is a third year doctoral student. Before coming to the graduate center, she received her BA in Greek and Latin at Swarthmore College, a Post-Baccalaureate in Classics at the University of Pennsylvania and her MA in Classics at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she also received the 2008 Teaching Assistant award. Johanna has taught extensively classes in Mythology and Greek literature in translation at the University of Maryland where she wrote an MA thesis on animal similes and their reflection of the role and status of women in both Homer's Odyssey and Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Her present interests are women in Greek literature, predominantly in Tragedy and Greek Lyric Poetry and she recently gave a paper on Ovid's Heroides at the University of Toronto's Graduate conference entitled Engendering Perception. Currently, she is a teaching fellow at Brooklyn College and an adjunct Professor at Lehman College.
Email: lilbraff@gmail.com
Emyr Dakin is a second-year doctoral student who received his BA in Classical Studies from Swansea University in the UK. Emyr's academic interests include classical mythology, fiction, and history, with an emphasis on the Hellenistic period.
In April 2011, Emyr presented a paper at the Princeton Graduate Student Colloquium on Greek fiction. In October 2011, he is scheduled to present a paper on Longus' Daphnis and Chloe at the CAAS conference.
Emyr teaches Classical Mythology in the College Now program at Queens College and the Greek and Latin Roots of English at Hunter College.
Email: edakin@gc.cuny.edu
Michael Goyette is a PhD Candidate who is currently writing a dissertation comparing language and concepts of illness in Senecan tragedy and in the medical writings of the Roman author Celsus. Michael has received MA and MPhil degrees in Classics at The Graduate Center, and received a BA in Classical Studies: Greek from Vassar College. His research interests currently include Greek and Roman tragedy, the Roman novel, linguistics and etymology, and ancient medicine. He also has hands-on experience with material culture from participating in the 2011 Summer Session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and from working at an excavation of an archaic period sanctuary on the island of Despotiko.
In March 2010, Michael had an article published in the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections entitled "Ptolemy II Philadelphus and the Dionysiac Model of Political Authority". He also had article on his pedagogical experiences published in the Fall 2012 issue of Classical World. He has also presented research papers at conferences held by the University of Pennsylvania, the University of South Carolina, the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, the Classical Association of Canada, and the American Philological Association. At The Graduate Center, Michael has organized graduate student conferences which have brought together speakers from across the world. He was the chair of the conference Living on the Edge: Liminality in Classical Antiquity in April 2010, and followed up this successful endeavor by co-chairing the conference Spes et Ratio Studiorum: Education in the Classical World in May 2011.
Besides cultivating his scholarly interests, Michael regularly teaches a core curriculum course on Greek and Roman literature and culture at Brooklyn College. There he has also taught courses such as Greek and Roman Mythology, and The Self and Society. His teaching efforts at Brooklyn College were recognized in May 2011 with the Eileen Barbara Costas Contes Memorial Prize for exceptional pedagogy. In addition, Michael has taught at the City College of New York, including an introductory Latin language course and a course entitled The Greek and Latin Roots of the English Language. To refine his teaching skills, he frequently attends pedagogical seminars focused on finding methods to engage and inform diverse groups of students.
Email: migoyette@gmail.com
Timothy Hanford is a doctoral candidate in classics. His current research focus is on issues of torture and excess in Neronian literature, in particular in Seneca's tragedies and in Lucan. Tim has recently presented papers entitled "Antony's Desecration of the Domus in Cicero's Second Philippic" (Boston University, 2011), "The Migrant Killer in Homer" (University of Pennsylvania, 2011) and "Caesar and the Paradox of Peace in Lucan's Bellum Civile" (ACL Institute, 2010). He has attended the summer programs of both the American Academy in Rome (2003) and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2009). Tim currently teaches at Brooklyn College and Hunter College. He also has 10 years of experience teaching high-school Latin in Brooklyn, having obtained permanent New York State public school teacher certification in Latin grades 7-12. He received a BA in Classics from NYU and an MAT in Latin at Hunter College.
Email: thanford@gc.cuny.edu
Tristan Husby is a first year doctoral student. He graduated from Connecticut College in 2009 with a BA in Classics. His academic interests are philosophy, war, slavery, the formation and dissolution of ancient societies.
Email: tristan.husby@gmail.com
Aramis Lopez is a second-year doctoral student. He received a B.A. in Human Ecology (concentration in Philosophy) at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, and a second B.A. in Classics and Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. He is currently a teaching fellow at Hunter College, as well as one of the co- chairs of the 2011 Classics Graduate Student Conference, "Spes et Ratio Studiorum: Education in the Classical World." He also serves on the Executive Committee and as the Classics representative in the Doctoral Students Council. His interests include Plato, Epicurus, and Hellenistic poetry and philosophy.
Email: aramisllopez@gmail.com
Jeremy March is a fifth-year doctoral student. He received a B.A. in Classics and Philosophy from Mary Washington College. He has attended summer intensive classes in Greek at the University of Texas at Austin, in Latin at the University of Virginia, and in upper-level Latin at the City University of New York. Jeremy's main interests include Greek language and linguistics, Greek literature, and applications of technology in the humanities. He created the website philolog.us (formerly known as dendrea.org) which is an interface to the Greek and Latin lexica hosted by the Perseus Project. He teaches at Queens College.
Email: jmarch@gc.cuny.edu
Melissa K. Marturano is a third-year Ph.D fellow. She received her B.A. in Ancient Greek and Latin and Classical Civilization from Boston University in 2010 (Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa). While at Boston University, she was a recipient of the four-year Palma Argenta Latin Scholarship and the John Oddy Memorial Award for excellence in the study of classical history. Also during her undergraduate years, she attended the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. Melissa is broadly interested in (predominantly Roman) gender, queer, and women's studies, particularly the participation of women in religion and mystery cults, the galli, the reaction to and the representation of rape and sexual violence in ancient sources, lesbianism in the ancient sources, (transgressive) women of the late Republic, Augustan Age, and imperial household, female-sponsored epigraphy and architectural projects, and the roles of women in her favorite authors, Catullus, Euripides, Homer, Ovid, Petronius, Sophocles, and Vergil. Melissa teaches Classics in translation at Brooklyn College and served on her department's Faculty Membership Committee in 2011-2012 and now serves on the Elections Committee. In October 2011, she presented a paper on rapes and victim-blaming in Ovid's Metamorphoses at the Classical Association of Atlantic States annual conference and in May 2012, she presented a paper on sexist and feminists scholarly reactions to Sempronia in Sallust's Bellum Catilinae at the Classical Association of Canada annual conference. In her spare time, she volunteers for various anti-sexual violence and pro-reproductive choice coalitions, including Feminist Resistance, and co-runs and edits a feminist literary blog, Blessing All the Birds, about the image and music of Joanna Newsom.
Email: mmarturano@gc.cuny.edu
Irene Morrison-Moncure is a PhD student in Classics and a MAGNET Fellow with the Office of Educational Opportunity and Diversity at the Graduate Center. She received her BA in Classics from the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 2011. Her interests include Roman epic, Latin pedagogy, and animal imagery and simile in poetry. She also serves as the Assistant Director of Student Programs for Ascanius: The Youth Classics Institute and coordinates the CUNY Pipeline Program.
Email: irmorrisonmonc@gmail.com
Nathan Oglesby is a first year MA student. He got himself a BA in Latin at Western Washington University in a town called Bellingham. His chief concerns are poetry & music & philosophy, especially such as they constitute for him an inextricably bound spiritual discipline. He raps and makes movies, though hardly in a conspicuous capacity at this time. But that'll change. More immediately relevant, he wrote a paper once that he read at a Willamette University classics conference, which consisted of identifying analogues between Greek and Roman lyric poetry and American hip-hop. He promises more to come on this tip.
Email: nathandoglesby@gmail.com
Cameron Pearson is a 6th year Ph.D. student writing a dissertation on archaic Greek elegy and its relation to epigraphy. His most recent paper, "Different Ideologies of Retreat in the Iliad and Archaic Elegy," was delivered at the 2010 fall meeting of CAAS. In 2009- 2010 Cameron was a regular member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. In March of 2010 he was a short-term fellow at the American Research Center in Sofia and in May he took part in the ASCSA excavations of 'the Byzantine House' in Ancient Corinth. He is also the English translator of an Archaeological guide to Durrës, Albania, Artemis à Dyrrhachion: Guides de Durres 1. Before beginning at the Graduate Center, he lived in Paris while studying linguists and comparative literature at l'Université Paris Diderot and received his B.A. in literature from the New School University here in New York.
Email: cpearson@gc.cuny.edu
David K. Sage is a second-year doctoral student. He received his B.A. in Latin and Greek from Hunter College in 2009 (Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa). Prior to attending Hunter, David studied Latin and Greek at Vassar College. David's main interests include ancient linguistics, metrics, and ancient humor.
Email: dsage@gc.cuny.edu
Jared Simard is a PhD candidate who is currently working on a dissertation on Classics’ reception in America by analyzing the mythological iconography associated with Rockefeller Plaza. Jared has received an MA in Classics from The Graduate Center, CUNY, and received a BA in Classics and History from the University of Pittsburgh (Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa). A previous Graduate Teaching Fellow, he is currently an Adjunct Lecturer at Hunter College where he teaches Classical Mythology, The Greek and Latin Roots of English, Roman Civilization, and Beginning Latin 101 & 102. He has served on several of the Classics Program’s standing committees, and is a longtime representative on the Doctoral Students' Council (DSC), having served as Co-Chair for Communications during the 2011-2012 academic year. He currently sits on the Graduate Council’s Structure Committee. He was an organizer and then co-chair for the 1st and 2nd annual Classics graduate student conferences respectively. Lastly, he takes great pleasure in serving as this year's chair for the Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies Group (CANES), of which he is a co-founder. Jared recently presented papers at the inaugural conference of the Digital Classics Association, the 11th Annual CUNY IT conference, and the New York Society of the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of National Archaeology Day. He was recently awarded a grant from the Doctoral Student Research Grant Program Competition #7 to conduct an architectural sculpture and relief field survey of Manhattan. The data collected has become a part of his larger digital collection of classical mythology in post-antique art, currently housed on the website mappingmythology.com. His scholarly interests include Latin poetry and personification, mythology in the arts, reception studies, and digital humanities.
Email: jsimard@gc.cuny.edu
Alan Sumler is a doctoral candidate in Classics. He came to the Graduate Center in 2005 holding a BA in Sociology and Philosophy from the University of North Texas and a Master of Humanities in Classics from the University of Dallas. The CUNY GC has since granted him a Masters of Art (2010) and Masters of Philosophy (2012) in Classics. He taught all around NYC at the City College New York, Queens College, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and Montclair State University (NJ). Recently he taught ancient Greek and Latin at the University of Dallas and philosophy at Collin College in Plano, TX. Presently he is a full time Instructor of Philosophy at Metro State University of Denver. He also works as a part time Adjunct Instructor of Classics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Last December Alan presented a paper at the NYU Department of Classics graduate symposium "Ancient Aetia" entitled "Comic First Inventions." He has previously given papers at Princeton and Boston University. His dissertation concerns the intersection between ancient Greek comedy and mythology including an analysis of Aristophanes, Menander, the Poetae Comici Graeci, and comic papyrus. He is working under the auspices of J. Lidov, D. Clayman, J. Roberts, and J. Rusten of Cornell University. Alan has an article in Classical World (103.4) entitled "A Catalog of Shoes: Puns in Herodas Mime 7." His interests include ancient Greek and Latin poetry, historiography, ancient comedy and satire, poetic technique, mythology, mythography, ancient Greek pottery, and the everyday world of the ancients. He also studies a vast range of topics in ancient and modern philosophy.
Email: asumler@gc.cuny.edu
Alissa Vaillancourt is a 4th year Ph.D. student who received a B.A. from College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA). As an undergraduate, she attended the College Year in Athens study abroad program in Athens, Greece. After graduating from Holy Cross, she taught English as a second language in Rome, Italy for one year, and, as the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, she returned to Rome in 2005 in order to attend the American Academy in Rome Summer Classical Program. Currently, she is a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Brooklyn College. Her scholarly interests include ancient Greeks in the Roman world, Hellenistic poetry, and social history.
Email: availlancourt@gc.cuny.edu
Chris Weimer is a first year doctoral student. Before coming to the Graduate Center, he earned his BA in Latin and Greek with a minor in Judaic Studies at the University of Memphis and his MA in Classics at San Francisco State University, where he was awarded Ungaretti Translation Award for best Latin translation. His Master's thesis examined the role religion played in ethnic discourse in Herodotus' Histories. His undergraduate thesis investigated the topos of cannibalism in Graeco-Roman and Near Eastern literatures, and the fruits of this research was presented as "Anthropophagy in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East" at SBL/ASOR Central States regional conference in 2009 and as "The Cannibalism Topos in Graeco-Roman and Near Eastern Literary Traditions" at SFSU's Classics Department Graduate Student Forum in 2010. He also worked as a research assistant with Dr. Megan Williams in 2010 and 2011 on the Enmannsche Kaisergeschichte. While Chris maintains a strong research interest in cannibalism, Graeco-Roman religion, and Herodotus, he is further interested in the Greek epic cycle, lyric poetry, interactions between archaic Greece and Near Eastern cultures, and historical/comparative linguistics.
Email: cweimer@gc.cuny.edu
Maura K. Williams came to CUNY after a summer at the American Academy in Rome's Classical Summer School with a BA in French and Classics from the University of Vermont and an MA in Classics from the University of Oregon. She has taught Latin and French in public and private secondary schools and has also been an adjunct at Queens College for the summer Classical Mythology course. Scholarly interests include Hellenistic and Roman Epigram and Elegy, Papyrology and intertextual studies. She is currently working on her dissertation: "Homeric Diction in Posidippus."
Email: MWilliams2@gc.cuny.edu
Profiles for the following students are pending.
John Dreger
Jack Kaufmann
Thomas Kingsley
Stephen Ogumah
RECENT ALUMNI
Michael Broder completed his dissertation on queer kinship, camp aesthetics, and Juvenal's ninth satire in 2010 under the direction of Prof. Craig Williams. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from New York University and a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Michael is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Classics at Brooklyn College. He was on the Latin faculty of the summer 2012 Latin/Greek Institute. In 2011-12, he was a post-doctoral teaching fellow in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. In addition, Michael has taught at Montclair State University, Queens College, Hunter College, York College, and in the Language Reading Program at the Graduate Center. Michael is interested in applying queer theory, feminism, and other postmodern approaches to classical literature and culture. He has presented papers at APA, CAAS, and CAMWS, as well as at conferences at Brown, Princeton, UCLA, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and the Universities of Durham and Exeter in the UK. Michael has published reviews in Classical Journal and the Bryn Mawr Classical Review and has work forthcoming in Classical World and in the anthology Ancient Obscenities forthcoming from Michigan University Press. Michael is also a creative writer, with poems and essays in numerous journals and anthologies including This New Breed (2004), My Diva (2009), and Divining Divas (2012).
Email: mbroder@mbroder.com
Paul McBreen received his Ph. D. on Feb. 1, 2012. The title of his dissertation is Ktiseis/Aitia in Various Ancient Greek Prose Authors. He will attend the Summer Institute for Greek Palaeography at Lincoln College, Oxford during August of 2012. He is currently researching Platonic and Demosthenic scholia, and lexica from late antiquity. He is employed as a Substitute Assistant Professor of English at Hostos Community College, CUNY, where he would like to become a tenured faculty member.
pmcbreen@gc.cuny.edu
Georgia Tsouvala completed her dissertation, "The social and historical context of Plutarch's Erotikos," under the supervision of Professor Ronnie Ancona, and currently Georgia holds a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of History at Illinois State University. Previously, she has taught classics courses at Hunter College (2001-2003) and history courses as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Western Illinois University (2005-2007). In addition, Georgia has co-directed study abroad trips to Greece (2005) and Rome (2007). In the past, she has worked as a research and editorial assistant for a number of publications and for the Database of Classical Bibliography. Georgia's research interests include Greek and Latin language and literature with a special focus on Plutarch, Greek and Roman history (especially the social history of Greece during the early Empire), epigraphy, prosopography, and gender. She has presented a number of papers both nationally and internationally on Plutarch and his milieu, and has completed a forthcoming article entitled "Integrating marriage and homonoia," for the Proceedings of the 7th International Plutarch Society Congress at Rethymno. Her future publication agenda includes a commentary on Plutarch's Erotikos, as well as work on Thespian inscriptions. Georgia has been the recipient of the Doreen C. Spitzer Advanced Fellowship and of the Broneer Travel Award from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens where she was an associate member and fellow (2003-2005). She has also received the generous support of the Mario Capelloni Dissertation Year Fellowship from the Graduate Center. Georgia has participated in summer programs in both Greece and Italy for which she received the Mary A. Sollman Scholarship for Study Abroad at the American Academy in Rome Summer Program from the New York Classical Club (2000), and the Kenneth Mass Fund Scholarship for summer study at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from the Classics Department at Hunter College (1999). Finally, she has been one of the two national Graduate Student Liaisons for the Women's Classical Caucus, and most recently Georgia was nominated by Illinois State University as the institution's representative to the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Email: gtsouva@ilstu.edu