I joined Penn’s Classical Studies department in 2024 after graduating with my BA in Classical Languages from Wheaton College (Illinois) and my MA in Classics from the University of Notre Dame. My undergraduate honors thesis focused on Lucian of Samosata’s satirical portrayal of divine justice in his comic dialogues. In my Master’s thesis, I studied how three authors in the Second Sophistic (Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, and Lucian) received and responded to Plato’s idea of poetic inspiration. At Penn, I plan to continue researching Imperial Greek literature, focusing especially on literary authors’ engagement with philosophical topics (e.g., divine action and agency, virtue and vice, Platonism and the Hellenistic schools of philosophy) and their varied reception of and participation in the Classical literary tradition. My broader interests include Greek language and style, literary criticism in antiquity, and the dialogues of Plato. I have also studied several Semitic languages, and enjoy reading the Hebrew Bible (along with its ancient translations), Second Temple Jewish literature, and early Christian literature.