American Academy in Rome Honors Darcy Tuttle with 2025-2026 Rome Prize
Darcy Tuttle will deeply engage with her work in ancient studies and collaborate with artists and scholars across disciplines during prestigious fellowship in Italy
Congratulations to Darcy, who will be completing her dissertation while in Rome next year!!
PRESS RELEASE:
The American Academy in Rome announced today the winners of the 2025–26 Rome Prize, the rigorous competition supporting innovative fellows in the arts, humanities, and sciences. The Donald and Maria Cox | Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Rome Prize is awarded to Darcy Tuttle to support her work in ancient studies. The Rome Prize equips artists and scholars with the time, space, setting, and colleagues to explore and create in the singular city of Rome. The 35 recipients will reside at the Academy’s 11-acre grounds in the Eternal City for five to ten months, starting this September.
“The Rome Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious fellowship programs and provides the rare opportunity for scholars and artists across a range of sub-fields to collaborate with each other,” said Peter N. Miller, President of the American Academy in Rome. “Presented with the opportunity to deeply engage with their work and with that of the other fellows, Rome Prize winners return home with perspectives profoundly enriched by their immersion in an interdisciplinary community set in Rome. The winners form the heart of the Academy, embodying its ethos and extending its international impact through their work now and into the future.”
"Darcy Tuttle is an extremely deserving recipient of a Rome Prize,” said Duncan Macrae, Associate Professor of Ancient Greek & Roman Studies, UC Berkeley. “Her work on Roman cult of the dead shows how ancient Romans extended the boundaries of their community - and their law - beyond the limits of life and death. A year in Rome will allow her to advance this exciting project - and to bring together past and present as part of the scholarly and artistic community of the American Academy."
Darcy Tuttle’s project, “Ghost Justice: Crime, Community, and the Roman Cult of the Dead (1st cent. BCE – 3rd cent. CE),” explores how ideas of law and justice shaped how ancient Romans interacted with the divine dead. This project involves close study of ancient texts and stone inscriptions, as well as the results of cutting-edge archaeology. By using the law to illuminate the cult of the dead and the cult of the dead to illuminate the law, she aims to deepen our understanding of both and to highlight the fundamental inseparability of religion and the law in ancient Rome.
“Fellows credit their time at the Academy with reshaping their understanding of their disciplines, inspiring them to think more broadly and act more boldly in their creative and scholarly endeavors,” said Calvin Tsao, Chair of the Board of Trustees for the American Academy in Rome. “For decades, the most promising American scholars and artists have honed their craft at the Academy and have been transformed into luminaries for their disciplines. We are committed to supporting this evolution for years to come.”
More information on this year's Rome Prize winners can be found HERE.