Areas of Interest
Latin literature, gender and sexuality, cultural history, translation theory
Biography
I work on Latin literature, both poetry and prose, and Roman social history, especially gender and sexuality. My research frequently focuses on ancient masculinity, with interests in representations of friendship, intimacy and social desire, as well as theoretical ideas related to homosociality and normativity in ancient societies. I write about these ideas in Martial and in Catullus, with detours into Ovid, Horace, and Pliny the Younger. My latest research and teaching also deals with histories of slavery, ethnicity, and other aspects of marginality in the Mediterranean world, in both Latin and Greek.
At the University of Toronto I teach Latin and Greek at all levels, lecture courses on myth and Graeco-Roman civilization, and seminars on Sexuality and Gender, Marginal Identities, and the Ancient Novel. I am also interested in research and teaching related to translation theory and practice, classics pedagogy for the modern university, and broadly in interdisciplinary approaches to the ancient world.