I work chiefly on Late Antique social and intellectual history and the material culture of the later Roman Empire. My research focuses on perceptions of piety and the impact of asceticism in Late Antique thought, particularly the ways in which the holiness of pagan and Christian ascetics was exhibited, accessed, and exploited through their bodies, portraits, and biographies. For my Master’s thesis, entitled “Sophist, Saint, and Student: The Philosopher Shield Portraits from Aphrodisias and the Intercessory Role of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity”, I examined the relationships between viewer and image, holy man and disciple, in the biographies and portraiture of Greco-Roman cultural heroes and philosophers.
My dissertation project explores the impact of maternal asceticism on child mortality and the family economy in the Greek vita of Matrona of Perge, a fifth-sixth century matron who abandoned her family to pursue a religious vocation as a eunuch monk (and later abbess) in Constantinople. Matrona’s lengthy and colorful hagiography provides a jumping off point for a larger discussion of the paradoxical roles of mothers and children in early Christian literature and the negotiation between marriage, motherhood, and the call towards asceticism in the lives and letters of holy mothers and their disciples in Late Antiquity.
Additional areas of interest include urban topography, the reception of classical texts (Homer especially) in the later Roman and Byzantine empires, and Greek folk culture. Archaeological fieldwork and extensive travel throughout Europe and the Near East have provided a strong material foundation for my research and my understanding of the ancient world. I have excavated at Tel Dor, Israel, and two Late Antique sites in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and in Turkey, I participated in a field survey of Late Antique and Byzantine era churches in Cappadocia through Koç University.
