I grew up in rural North Carolina and did my undergraduate work at UNC Chapel Hill, majoring in Philosophy and Linguistics. After a year working abroad in Egypt, I returned to UNC for its Post-Baccalaureate Program in Ancient Mediterranean Languages, then moved to California for graduate studies at UC Berkeley, where I received my M.A. in Greek and Ph.D. in Classics.
The focus of my recent work has been the history and ideology of conceiving the world as a kosmos. Against the consensus view that this word means “order” and that it was one of the early philosophers who, in recognizing a quasi-naturalistic order to the world, decided to call it kosmos, I argue that the word’s meaning comes closer to “machine” or “apparatus,” and make the case that the earlier epic tradition of Homer and Hesiod already conceives the world of its diegesis, being a fundamentally social world consisting of mortal and immortal persons, as the political instrument of Zeus, the particular kosmos by which he is always executing his cosmic will. This work is motivated by a broader interest in the confrontation of high and low cultural traditions in the Greco-Roman world and its consequences for later political and aesthetic thought.
Education & Training
- Ph.D., Classics, University of California, Berkeley
- M.A., Greek, University of California, Berkeley
- Post-Baccalaureate, Ancient Mediterranean Languages, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- B.A. (Honors with Distinction), Philosophy and Linguistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research Interests
The cultural and intellectual history of Ancient Greece; Greek literature (esp. epic and lyric poetry) and the philosophical tradition; Classical reception