I received a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Classical Studies and Ancient Greek, both summa cum laude, from the University of Richmond, where I received a full-tuition merit scholarship and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. I received my PhD in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 2024.
My research sits at the intersection of classics, art theory and media studies and is chiefly concerned with how art can encode complex forms of interaction. My dissertation, Actualized Mimesis: The Processual Animation of Greco-Roman Objects, theorizes the wide array of effects that occur when independent, non-representational processes of life (e.g. pouring a glass of wine, lighting a lamp, executing a criminal, etc.) are used as vehicles to represent something (e.g. what happens when you insert pencils into the back of a Julius-Caesar-shaped pencil holder). It then offers a preliminary study of “actualized mimesis” in the ancient Mediterranean, from the Bronze Age to the Imperial period.
Other major scholarly interests of mine include dreams and the surreal; the dynamics of comedy; entheogens, medicines, magic and natural history, especially as they relate to ancient understandings of the capacities of representation; nineteenth and early twentieth-century receptions (textual and material) of the classics; and reception of the classics in modern, digital media. In my spare time, I enjoy making clothing, toys and ceramics, communing with cats and spending time in nature.