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Katherine Dennis *23

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Student Year

2023

Bio

I received my bachelor’s degree in English and Classics from Williams College (magna cum laude, 2015) and went on to read for an MSt in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, Oxford (2016), before arriving at Princeton to begin my PhD in the fall of 2016.

As of early 2020, I’ve begun work on my dissertation, provisionally titled “Songs of Subjection in Latin Pastoral”; the project seeks to situate Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics within their historical, intellectual, and economic contexts, and thereby to demonstrate how the poetics of each collection reflect and depend on a landscape shaped by the necessity of slave labor. In Summer 2020, I will participate in the Classical Summer School at the American Academy at Rome to assist in my research on material culture as evidence for the villa economy.

Both my undergraduate thesis and masters dissertation focused on comparing the poetry of Horace and Catullus: the thesis considers their erotic personae and the dissertation their treatment of the themes of purity and pollution. Although I have moved away from their work in my current project, I maintain a strong interest in Horace’s Satires and Epodes especially, and have recently written and presented on the significance of the Esquiline in Satire 1.8.

My other research interests include Sappho, the history of scholarship, Theocritus and other Hellenistic poetry, and gender and sexuality. Here, I’ve taught Classical Myth and Intermediate Latin, and also teach Latin through the Prison Teaching Initiative; I’m looking forward to dedicating myself to teaching as much as possible in my remaining time at Princeton, and to developing and adopting strategies for thoughtful and inclusive pedagogy in my courses.