Bio
I came to Princeton in September of 2019, after receiving a BA in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I was generously supported by Robertson Scholarship, which also enabled me to have intermittent stints at Duke University.
I am currently writing a dissertation that reads post-Triumviral Latin elegy against the social fragmentation and traumas caused by Roman civil war. Rather than reading trauma as a condition affecting individual psyches, I argue that many phenomena in the early Augustan period can be read anew using theories of trauma concerning societal reorganization post collective catastrophe. I maintain a general occupation with the literature and history of Rome more broadly, not only the Triumviral period and its aftermath, but also imperial epistolography and epigraphy, and Roman declamation.
Reception studies as well are (somewhat complicatedly) close to my heart. I have strong interests in reception theory and Black diasporic receptions of Classics, with particular attention to the Pan-African and so-called “Afrocentrist” movements, as well as in the intertextual, allusive, and political elements of hip-hop.
Finally, I am a great believer in the value of outreach and public-facing scholarship, specifically as it relates to diversity, inclusion, and equity in the academy. To this end I have written for The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, Corona Borealis, and Pasts Imperfect, and am an associate editor of the Society for Classical Studies blog. I encourage students from many backgrounds to reach out to me to discuss many of the live and fascinating issues that face our field, whether at Princeton or elsewhere.
