Congratulations to Jeffrey Easton (PhD, 2018), who in July will begin a tenure-track position at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, as Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics.
At Southwestern, Jeffrey will teach about life and culture in Roman cities, focusing heavily on Ostia and Pompeii, through a blend of demography, social, economic, and political history, with elements of material culture, art history, and epigraphy.
Beyond the classroom, Jeffrey’s first book, Municipal Freedom and Interngenerations Social Mobility in Roman Italy, was released in December through Brill. He has plans for a second book project, examining the sub-elite experience in Roman communities. This line of research builds upon his interest in social mobility, while also pursuing new avenues of inquiry.
Other forthcoming work includes an article analyzing how Cicero used the epistolary genre of the commendatio (letter of recommendation) as a vehicle to ingratiate himself with the dictator Julius Caesar in 46-45 BCE (a period when Cicero is often portrayed as actively avoiding the arena of Roman politics), and another analyzing an Augustan reproduction of a third-century BCE inscription honouring the naval hero Caius Duilius as a window into the often ambiguous function of the office of dictator in the early Roman republic.
Congratulations, Jeffrey, and all the best at Southwestern!