Bio
I am a PhD candidate in Princeton’s Department of Classics and Program in the Ancient World (PAW). My research is situated at the intersection of Greek history, religious life, and epic poetry; within those subfields, I am particularly interested in issues of identity, power, and artistic production. My dissertation, supported by a UCHV Rockefeller Prize Fellowship, argues that the historical performance context of Homeric poetry created conditions ripe for political and theological developments among 6th/5th century non-elite Athenian audiences. I also study the reception of Classics in Mexico and the contemporary US/Mexico Borderlands, from which my family hails. This work explores how the ancient past, writ large, is constructed in Mexican and Mexican-American intellectual history and art. My thinking and writing on this topic takes place primarily within the research collective Antiquity in the Americas, which I coordinate together with my colleagues Kathleen N. Cruz (UC Davis) and Malina Buturović (Princeton).
I am proud to have received my pre-Princeton training from a wide community of classicists in my hometown of San Antonio, Texas. I earned my BA in Classics (2018, magna cum laude) at The University of Texas at San Antonio, with the major support of the McNair Scholars Program and classicists at Alamo Community Colleges and Trinity University. My senior thesis examined the semantics of blood in the Homeric epics, and its social functions and perceptions in the Greek world.
I am always happy to correspond with others who are interested in any of my research areas, and with anyone who would like to talk about applying to Princeton Classics or graduate school more generally.
