Archive

Language/Literature, Philosophy/Science

Botanical Knowledge and Vegetal Poetics in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry

My current research aims to answer three interrelated questions: (a) What did the botanical knowledge of the archaic and the classical Greek era look like?; (b) how and why did it offer the Greek authors of the time convenient ways of thinking (analogically) about other experiences and realms of speculation, such as society, kinship ties, or the body?; and (c) can the study of the ancient botanical knowledge ultimately help… Read more

Philosophy/Science

The Foundations of Stoic Physics

This project examines the nature and function of several important bodies in Hellenistic Stoic physics: the active principle, the passive principle, primary matter, the elements, pneuma, and the cosmos. The terms that refer to these bodies are used in many ways by the Stoics and their sources. By clarifying the different senses of these terms and reinterpreting several pieces of evidence in light of this analysis, we can determine the… Read more

Language/Literature, Mythology/Religion

Jewish Poets, Greek Poetry: Contextualizing Jewish-Greek Poetry as Post-Classical Literature

This project focuses on Jewish identity in antiquity, analyzing the relationship between literary practices, identity construction, and multilingualism in the ancient world through the study of Jewish poetic writings in Greek. It restores the status of Jewish-Greek poetry as literary works and their authors as legitimate voices of a Jewish identity. In the study of post-classical Greek literature, Jewish poets have been routinely neglected because they are not seen as… Read more

Language/Literature

Musical evidence for low boundary tones in ancient Greek*

Several scholars have posited a word- or clitic group-final low boundary tone for ancient Greek. The boundary tone would motivate accentual phenomena including the conversion of a word-final acute to a grave phrase-internally as well as the diachronic pitch-peak retraction that led to circumflex accents on penultimate syllables. The effects of such a low boundary tone should be audible in ancient Greek non-strophic vocal music, where there is a greater-than-chance… Read more

Art/Archaeology, History

The Bioarchaeology of the Early Mycenaean period: An interdisciplinary study of human skeletal remains from Ayios Vasileios (Laconia) and Kirrha (Phokis)

My research focuses on the social dimensions of Aegean mortuary practices, which I attempt to approach through a multidisciplinary bioarchaeological study of human remains in their archaeological context. This project, undertaken under the CHS Early Career Fellowship, focused on the transitional Early Mycenaean period (ca. 1700-1500 BC) and the investigation of key changes in mortuary treatment during these times. Two recently excavated Early Mycenaean cemeteries, Ayios Vasileios in Laconia and… Read more