Anna Bonnell Freidin *18

My research centers on reproduction and the family in Roman society, falling at the intersection of social history, cultural history, and the history of medicine and the body. In my dissertation, Uncertain Beginnings: Childbirth and Risk in the Roman World, I investigate how Greeks and Romans perceived, theorized, and mitigated the dangers of giving birth from the first through third century CE. The project is motivated by questions about agency and the nature and use of gendered authoritative knowledge, and draws on a wide range of material and textual evidence. 

I received my undergraduate degree in Classics from Harvard College in 2008 (summa cum laude) and an MPhil from Cambridge in 2009 with a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. My work at Harvard culminated in a thesis on the changing concept of virtus in the early Principate and its implications for Romans’ notions of their past, present, and future. At Cambridge, I completed several projects that centered on codes of conduct and ancient biography. Before coming to Princeton, I also worked at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. as an editorial assistant for The Virgil Encyclopedia (eds. R. Thomas & J. Ziolkowski, 2013).

At Princeton, I have taught Roman history (CLA 214, “The Other Side of Rome”) and Latin language (LAT 108, “Origins of Rome: Livy and Virgil”). My work has been supported by a Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship (2015-2016) and an American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship (2016-2017).