Current Graduate Students
Typically, between 3 and 5 graduate students begin their Ph.D. studies in Classics at Brown every year. The approximately 30 graduate students in the Classics department form part of a community of scholars studying the ancient world, together with graduate students in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and the Departments of Comparative Literature, Egyptology and West Asian Studies, History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Recent years have seen the inauguration of several graduate student-focused activities, including the Graduate Student Symposium, the Mellon Ancient Studies Workshop, various ad hoc reading groups, and Friday social hours.
Alexander Alderman [Alexander_Alderman@brown.edu]
Ninth Year
Interests: Greek tragedy, Roman elegy, Sokratikoi logoi, moral psychology, and virtue ethics.
Alex is currently teaching at Baylor University.
David Berger [David_Berger@brown.edu]
Fourth Year
David finished writing his dissertation, “Inhabiting the Epistemic Frame of Mind: Plato’s Protagoras and the Socratic Denial of Akrasia,” in his very first year in this program! Unfortunately, he submitted it under the auspices of the Philosophy Department at the University of Pittsburgh, so he’ll have to write another one. Latin special author: Lucretius (with David Konstan); Greek special author: Plato (with Mary Louise Gill). Other authors he regards as special: Seneca, Boethius, Henry David Thoreau, Martin Buber.
Heidi Broome-Raines [Heidi_Broome-Raines@brown.edu]
FIfth/Sixth Year
Heidi received a BA from Georgetown University in 2002 in Classical Languages with a minor in Modern Greek. Her main research interests include many aspects of ancient theater, especially tragedy; Modern Greek literature; and Greek history. Her special authors are Sophocles and Seneca. She attended the American School of Classical Studies at Athens Summer Session in 2003 and Regular Program in 2006-2007. At Brown she has taught Greek and Latin language classes since 2004. She has excavated at the sites of Despotiko and Corinth in Greece. She hopes to continue to gain experience teaching study-travel courses in Greece. She splits her time between Providence and Thessaloniki.
Asya Chernyak [Asya_Chernyak@brown.edu]
Fourth Year
Jeffery Clackley [Jeffery_Clackley@brown.edu]
First Year
Lauren Donovan [Lauren_Donovan@brown.edu]
Third Year
Lauren graduated from Cornell University in 2003 summa cum laude with a
B.A. in Classics. Before coming to Brown in 2005, she taught Latin at the
high-school level and tutored Classical Greek on the side. Her current
primary research interests include Alexandrian poetry (with special emphasis
on Apollonius Rhodius), the poetry of the Julio-Claudian age (particularly
Ovid, Seneca and Lucan), historiography, and the representations of and
allusions to the historical tradition in Roman poetry. On the Greek side,
her special author was the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (supervised by
David Konstan). On the Latin side, she is working on a special topic
concerning Augustan age literary representations of the Roman regal period
and the construction of historical memory through text and art (supervised
by Kurt Raaflaub). In addition to time in Ithaca and Providence, Lauren
attended the ICCS program in Rome in the fall of 2001 and has just completed
the ASCSA Summer Session in Athens during the summer of 2007.
Christopher Geadrities [Christopher_Geadrities@brown.edu]
Second Year
Christopher received a B.A. in Classical Languages and Philosophy from the University of Scranton, where he graduated summa cum laude in 2002. He went on to pursue graduate work in Classics at the University of Pittsburgh, where he received his M.A. in 2004. During his time in Pittsburgh he developed an interest in post-Vergilian epic and Greek tragedy (especially Euripides). Since arriving at Brown he has also become interested in ancient Greek scholarship (scholia, ancient commentaries, etc.), Senecan tragedy, and Late Latin poetry.
Timothy Haase [Timothy_Haase@brown.edu]
Third Year
Timmy graduated with a B.A. in Classical Languages at Fordham University (including a semester-long stopover at the ICCS in Rome in the fall of 2003), with honors, summa cum laude, and started here at Brown immediately afterward. While at Fordham, he completed a senior honors thesis entitled, “Amor and rape: Sexual Violence in Ovid’s Fasti.” As Timmy fancies himself a rather cheeky fellow, his research interests currently revolve around various humorists (an admittedly tendentious term) of the ancient world, along with ancient typologies of humor in general. He is currently completing a Latin special author on the Satyrica of Petronius, led by John Bodel, with plans to start a Greek special author on Aristophanes in the spring (supervised by Rene Nuenlist). His other interests include Ovid, Roman verse satire, Apuleius, the Greek novel, Roman comedy, and Augustan poetry in general, especially Roman love elegy. He is currently teaching both the fall and spring semester (though not at the same time, of course) of the two-semester elementary Attic Greek sequence (GREK 0100 and 0200)..
Jeffrey Hunt [Jeffrey_M_Hunt@brown.edu]
Fifth Year
Interests: Roman elegy and pastoral poetry.
Sarah Jacobson [Sarah_Jacobson@brown.edu].
First Year
Karen Kelly [Karen_Kelly@brown.edu]
Second Year
Karen received a B.A. in the University Scholars program at Baylor University in 2006, where she graduated summa cum laude . Her focus within the program was on Latin and Greek, and she wrote a thesis titled, "The Birds and the Bees: The Roman Poet as a Metaphorical Bird." In 2004, she had the opportunity to spend five weeks in Italy with Baylor in Italy; she also enjoyed a three-week tour of Turkey with her family in 2006 (the picture is taken in an old church in Cappadocia). Karen is currently trying to broaden her interests by reading from several different genres and time periods, but her main interests lie with Senecan tragedy and poetry in general, and specifically, the literary traditions of imagery.
Leo Landrey [Leo_Landrey@brown.edu]
Second Year
Leo received a B.A. in classics from Bowdoin College in 2005, where he graduated cum laude and wrote an honors thesis about the influence of Euripides’ Medea on book 3 of Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica. Before enrolling in Brown's graduate program, he attended Georgetown University’s Post-Bac program for the 2005-2006 academic year. Leo’s interests include Apollonius of Rhodes, Hellenistic poetry, and Greek Tragedy, as well as Augustan and Late Latin poetry.
Peter Lech [Peter_Lech@brown.edu]
Eighth year
Benjamin Low [personal website] [Benjamin_Low@brown.edu]
Eighth year
Interests: Roman poetry of the late Republic and early Empire, Greek and Roman epic, reception of Roman literature.
Michael McArthur [Michael_McArthur@brown.edu]
Eighth Year
Robin McGill [Robin_McGill@brown.edu]
Fourth Year 
Robin McGill earned her BA in Latin and Greek from the University of Georgia (2003) with a minor in psychology. She graduated summa cum laude, submitting a thesis on the 4th c. AD topic, “Appropriating the Past: A Study of Prophecy and Fulfillment in Prudentius’ Liber Cathemerinon.” The Lionel Pearson Fellowship awarded to her by the American Philological Association enabled her to spend a year studying at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she received a Masters of Letters (M.Litt.) with distinction in Latin and Greek (2005). Her thesis there dealt with the 4th c. BC topic, “Refuting Democracy: A Study of Dialectic as Political Discourse in Plato’s Gorgias.” Robin’s main interests at Brown have been in rhetoric and rhetorical theory. With these in mind, she has pursued a special field in Athenian Law with Adele Scafuro, and she is currently reading Quintilian with David Konstan. She is still very interested in Late Antique and Early Christian poetry as well. She has presented papers on Aristotle’s types of rhetoric at the APA in Montreal (2006) and on prophetic language in Late Antique poetry at the New England Medieval Studies Consortium Graduate Conference (2007).
Keeley Schell [Keeley_Schell@brown.edu]
Seventh Year
Keeley is teaching full-time at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts for the 2007-08 academic year. While teaching courses on women in the ancient world, elementary Latin, and Latin and Greek reading at the intermediate and advanced levels, she is completing her dissertation on the structural and thematic functions of allusion between simile and narrative in the Aeneid. Her interests include Latin and Greek epic, didactic prose (especially agricultural texts), and textual transmission; she will be delivering a paper on the transmission of Cicero's De Oratore in the Latin Prose panel of the 2008 APA meetings. Prior to study at Brown, Keeley graduated summa from Duke in 2000 with majors in Classical Languages and Classical Civilization, and then studied palaeography and Insular Latin hagiography for an M.Phil. in the department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University in 2001.
Jeanmarie Stinson [Jeanmarie_Stinson@brown.edu]
First Year 
Jeanmarie received her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999, where she graduated with highest honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her J.D. from Washington and Lee University School of Law in 2003, and practiced law thereafter. She recently returned to classics, and she is interested primarily in Greek history, law, and tragedy.
Cynthia Swanson [Cynthia_Swanson@brown.edu]
Second Year 
Cynthia finished her B.A. from Boston University with a double major in
English and Ancient Greek and Latin in 2006. Though in her second year she
is still focused on studying Classics broadly, her current interests are all
Latin poetry and love elegy specifically, the Classical tradition, and
issues of translation.
Wendy Teo [Wendy_Teo@brown.edu]
Seventh Year 
Wendy received her B.A. in Classics from Reed College. Her undergraduate thesis focused on Tibullus, but also examined the development of the genre of Latin Love Elegy as mythopoesis. During her time at Brown University, she has worked on the Pre-Socratics and Lucretius for her special author exams. She is currently writing her dissertation on the appeal of Greek tragedy, specifically on the pleasure to be gained from the painful experience. Her primary interests are in the intellectual and emotional responses to literature, and the interaction between poetry and philosophy.
Mark Thatcher [Mark_Thatcher@brown.edu]
Fourth Year 
Mark received his BA from Northwestern University in 2004, earning
Honors in Classics with the thesis "Educating the Statesmen: Polybius
and Cultural Conflict," and a minor in history, and participated in the
ICCS program in Rome in the fall of 2002. His primary field is ancient
history, specializing in Archaic Greece and Republican Rome, but he
tries to keep his secondary interests as broad as possible (including,
among others, historical linguistics and Hellenistic/Augustan poetry).
Since arriving at Brown, Mark has worked on special authors with Profs.
Kurt Raaflaub ("Roman Conquest of Greece, 200-146 BC) and Charles
Fornara ("Sicilian Local Historians). Currently a fourth-year student,
he hopes to continue these lines of research with a dissertation on
Greek colonialism, beginning in 2008.
Carrie Thomas [Carrie_Thomas@brown.edu]
Eighth Year
Interests: Greek tragedy, Augustan poetry and comparative and historical linguistics.
William Tortorelli [William_Tortorelli@brown.edu]
Tenth Year
Interests: Archaic Greek lyric, elegiac, and iambic poetry; Roman lyric poetry; textual criticism; meter; Ovid.
Dissertation: "Lyric Wisdom: Alcaeus and the tradition of Paraenetic Poetry from Hesiod to Horace"
Miryana Vassileva [Miryana_Vassileva@brown.edu]
Eighth Year
Christopher Welser [Christopher_Welser@brown.edu]
Ninth Year
Interests:Greek and Latin historiography; economy of antiquity and ancient economic thought; ancient literary theory; didactic poetry.
David Yates [David_Yates@brown.edu]
Fifth Year 
Dave earned his B.A. in History and Classics from the University of Virginia and his M.A. in Classics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dave’s interests include Fifth-Century Greek History, Atthidography, and the late Roman Republic.
Jennifer Yates [Jennifer_L_Yates@brown.edu]
Fifth Year 
Jenni completed her B.A. summa cum laude and with University Honors at Ohio Wesleyan University in 2003, majoring in Humanities/Classics and minoring in Medieval Studies and Ancient Studies. Before coming to Brown she participated in the ASCSA summer session. Jenni has completed special authors in Euripides and Ovid, but plans to write her dissertation on the ancient novels. When she isn’t busy with Classics, Jenni serves as the Head Teaching Consultant for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Brown’s Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning.