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Sarah Brucia Breitenfeld

(they/them)
  • Assistant Professor
  • Director of Graduate Studies

As a social and cultural historian, I am interested in researching narratives that have been systematically erased from our history books: the stories of women, enslaved people, sex laborers, non-citizen residents, and the people at the intersections of these identities. I know that we can gain better insight into modern social dynamics by studying the way ancient people lived their lives.

Before joining the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in 2024, I earned my doctorate at the University of Washington, where my dissertation, “‘Someone Get a Whip!’ Enslaved Women and Violence in Athenian Oratory, Comedy and Curses,” investigated the connection between gender, enslavement, and violence in Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.E. I also worked as a Center for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Davidson College in North Carolina, teaching courses on Greco-Roman slavery, race & identity, and gender & sexuality.   

My current book project, "Geographies of Enslavement: Gender, Violence, and Space in Ancient Greece," examines how enslaved women navigated built environments such as Greek households, symposia, brothels, and urban spaces. My additional publications address sexual assault in Roman Comedy, domestic laborers in Greek Old Comedy, war captives in Attic Oratory, Latin curse tablets from Roman Aquae Sulis, and same-sex relationships in receptions of ancient Greece. I am currently working on an article about sex-change narratives in the early Roman Empire.

    Education & Training

  • Ph.D., Classics, University of Washington
  • M.A., Classics, University of Washington
  • Post-Baccalaureate, Classics, University of Pennsylvania
  • B.A., Classics, Skidmore College
Awards
American Dissertation Fellowship, American Association of University Women, 2021–2022
Society of Scholars Graduate Fellowship, University of Washington, 2021–2022
Women’s Classical Caucus Best Pre-Ph.D. Paper Award, 2021–2022
Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Washington, 2021
Lambda Classical Caucus Graduate Student Paper Award, 2019
Representative Publications
  • “Flying at His Eyes with Her Nails: Pythias and the Violent Gaze in Terence’s Eunuchus,” Helios 53.1. [Forthcoming 2026]
  • “Taking Thratta’s Cherry: The Rape of Enslaved Domestic Laborers in Aristophanes.” In Ancient Rape Cultures: Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian, ed. E. Pyy. Rome: Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae. [Forthcoming.]
  • “One of the Olynthians: Violence against Enslaved Female War Captives in Dem. 19.196–98.” In Brill’s Companion to War Violence in the Ancient Mediterranean World, ed. L. Gilhaus. Leiden: Brill. [Forthcoming.]
  • May the Thief Become as Liquid as Water: Persuasion and Power in a Curse Tablet from Roman Bath.” In Inscriptions and the Epigraphic Habit. Brill Studies in Greek and Roman Epigraphy, ed. R. Benefiel & C. Keesling. Leiden: Brill, 321–338. 2023.
  • 'Never Bury My Bones Apart from Yours': Iliad Reception in Xena: Warrior Princess.” In The Routledge Companion to the Reception of Ancient Greek and Roman Gender and Sexuality, ed. K. Moore. New York: Routledge, 3–21. 2023.
Research Interests

Greek History, Slavery & Manumission, Gender & Sexuality, Race & Ethnicity, Graffiti & Epigraphy, Greco-Roman Magic, Greek Prose Literature (esp. Oratory), Greek and Roman Comedy, Reception Studies (esp. Shakespeare)