Research Interests
My interest lies in teaching undergraduate courses with the goal of showing students how similar the issues and concerns of living in a complex society, as faced by the ancient Greeks and Romans, are to what we deal with today. In my courses on classical mythology, Greek and Roman history, and Greek and Roman civilization, ancient sources serve as the foundational material for various methods of exploring and assessing what the Greeks and Romans actually thought and felt. By careful examination of surviving Greek and Latin literature, along with the archaeological record, we achieve a more precise understanding of what life was like in the ancient world. That knowledge, in turn, offers us more sophisticated and diverse mechanisms for appreciating our own 21st century existence.