Tags: Alumni

Our faculty continue to lead through outstanding research, prestigious fellowships, and academic innovation. Let’s delve into some of our renowned faculty’s recent accomplishments. 

Christine Albright 

 This semester, Christine Albright is teaching a Latin class on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and, for the first time, a Classical Culture seminar on “katabaseis” (trips to the underworld). Students are reading Greek and Latin authors such as Homer, Aristophanes, and Vergil and also later works such as Dante’s Inferno and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. The semester will end with an examination of R.F. Kuang’s new novel Katabasis.  Oliver will turn 15 this year!  

Mario Erasmo  

Mario Erasmo continues to explore the theatricality of death in his research: The Spectacular Dead: Staging Death in Classical Antiquity is now in production (Bloomsbury, 2026) and he gave a lecture, “Is a Corpse Art?” at UGA in Cortona.  He is currently the Principal Investigator for Franklin College of the Teagle Foundation’s Cornerstone: Learning for Living Initiative.  

Erika Hermanowicz 

 Erika Hermanowicz gave two papers this year, one in March for the Late Roman Seminar at Oxford University, and the second in July at the Leeds International Medieval Congress, where she had a lovely afternoon tea with Elizabeth Lavender (we knew her at Georgia as Elizabeth Ridgeway). And a big congratulations to her as she just defended her dissertation, and she now has a Ph.D. from Yale University! Also, a book Hermanowicz has been working on since the summer of 2016 was published this year. Neil McLynn (Corpus Christi, Oxford University) and Hermanowicz published “The Conference of Carthage in 411 (Translated Texts for Historians 90).” She has become very interested in gardening as well. This year, her yard was filled with honeybees, hummingbirds, bumblebees, and butterflies, and the winged pageantry was pure joy.  

 Jared Klein  

Jared Klein has been active in research and mentoring of students. On the research side, he either wrote, revised and had accepted, or published a trio of long articles as part of his ongoing project on the comparative syntax of the oldest first millennium translations from the Greek New Testament. These include a study of the “irrealis” in Old Church Slavic (Indo-European Linguistics, Dec. 2024), a follow-up study of the Old Church Slavic conditional (Indogermanische Forschungen to appear December 2026), and a study of adversative conjunction in Classical Armenian in which he presented a model for adversative conjunction more comprehensive than any that has been offered so far. As this report is being written, this article is about to be sent off for publication. 

 In addition, Klein published a book review in “Orientalistische Literaturzeitung” and read page proofs of his study, Stylistic Repetition in the Rigveda. Intrastanzaic Repetition to be published in the monograph series of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in either late 2025 or 2026.  

On the mentoring side, Klein shepherded through Amanda Tipton and Artin Nasirpour to admission to Ph.D. candidacy in Linguistics. 

 On a cruise from French Polynesia to Hawaii to San Diego, Klein took advantage of ten at-sea days to read (and ultimately produce an 8000-word report) on a handbook of ancient Indo-European grammars prior to its publication by Cambridge University Press. As he sat out on the deck near the swimming pool with his red pencil, he attracted a great deal of attention, including a query from one of the travelers as to whether he was a professional proofreader (answer: No, but it amounts to the same thing.)  

Christian Langer  

Pictured: Langer study an object in the UCL Petrie Museum 

Langer’s exciting first year at UGA was very busy. He taught courses on Egyptian history, Classical mythology and ancient economic history, while developing new courses that will be implemented successively over coming semesters. 

The year also had allowed opportunities for Langer present his work at several venues: he first had the honor to deliver his first ever keynote at a conference in Bucharest, Romania; then gave an invited talk at Emory University and Langer studying an object in the UCL Petrie Museum and spoke at the Annual Meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) in San Francisco in spring, before presenting in San Diego and at the largest German-speaking Egyptology conference in Berlin, Germany, over what turned out to be a busy summer.  

The conferences in San Diego and Berlin followed a research trip to the United Kingdom, where Langer visited the study collection of the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and the National Trust’s estate at Kingston Lacy, Dorset to work on yet unpublished Egyptian objects; the summer break produced materials for three future articles. Those will join the publications that came out over the course of this academic year: two articles with the Cambridge Archaeological Journal and Middle East Critique, and two chapters with Amsterdam University Press and the Cumulus Association, with other pieces submitted. 

 In addition, to facilitate a knowledge transfer in the realm of Digital Humanities and Ancient Studies, Langer managed to land a Willson Center Short-Term Visiting Fellowship to bring in my colleague Franziska Naether from Germany for Fall 2025.  

Andres Matlock 

 In addition to the exciting summer in Rome, Matlock had an eventful and productive year. He taught another of his newly designed courses for the first time, on "Classical Myth in Performance," which examines the transformation of mythic storytelling through theater, opera, dance, sport, and film. Matlock presented research at conferences in Rome, Philadelphia, and Bodega Bay, CA. And he made significant progress on his book, “Coincidences of Mind and Text in Cicero and Freud,” about which Matlock looks forward to sharing more news soon. To top it all off, he and his wife gave birth to their first child, born at the end of October. 

 John Nicholson  

John Nicholson has had a good year teaching a nice variety of courses. In addition to his usual sections of Classical Mythology every semester, and sections of second and third semester Latin, he has recently enjoyed teaching upper-level Latin courses on Roman Epistles, and Latin Prose Composition.  

Jordan Pickett  

Pictured: Pickett outside the famous manuscripts cave at Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Gansu province 

Pickett has had another busy year. Besides submitting chapters and field reports concerned with radiocarbon dating of historical mortars from Sardis, the history of Roman and Byzantine law concerning forestry, and the history of the Via Egnatia, the Roman road connecting the Adriatic with Constantinople. Otherwise, it has been an especially busy year for travel, as he prefers.  

After taking another group of twenty UGA students abroad with the department’s Croatia and Venice Maymester for Heritage Conservation and Archaeology, Jordan spent several further weeks in Turkey for fieldwork. This time included the use of a chainsaw, and a motorcycle, though not simultaneously. In Fall of 2025, Pickett was an invited participant at two events in China: the first, at Shanghai’s Fudan University, was an international Pickett outside the famous manuscripts cave at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Gansu province. conference concerning the relations between Iran and China in the first millennium BC. The second, at Dunhuang, a very famous site in Western China at the edge of the Han Empire and the beginning of the Silk Road, was an invited talk for which Pickett discussed the transmission of Roman bath technology (namely, the hypocaust) through Sasanian and Abbasid territory into Central Asia, before it appeared at Tangchaodun in Xinjiang province in the later ninth century.  

Here at Georgia, in October 2025 Pickett also delivered a talk that gave updates on his collaborative work with Mattia Pistone from Geology concerning the Roman-period eruptions of the volcano Chimborazo in Ecuador. For the year ahead, Pickett has several more engagements including at UCLA, and various publications moving through the pipeline related to Sardis, infrastructure, and environmental history.  

Mariah Smith 

Mariah Smith is in her second year as undergraduate coordinator and enjoys reconnecting with students when they come for advising. Teaching highlights from the past year include reading Book 1 of “Livy" with her Spring Gateway Latin class and watching her students transform the story of two groups of bellicose triplets in delightful ways for the Creative Translation project. All the projects were highly inventive, but standouts were a stop motion animation of the passage, a screenplay (read out by members of the class), and the battle transformed into Magic the Gathering style card game.  

Likewise, Smith’s Roman Culture Honors students produced amazing creative research projects, like the comparison of Quintilian’s ideals about early education with modern parental concerns and a game about getting clean water into a Roman city!  

Benjamin Wolkow  

Benjamin M. Wolkow continues to teach a variety of courses in Greek language and literature, although he did have the rare treat to cover Roman poets in a summer course on Classical Epic Poetry.  He also expanded his repertoire by teaching a German for reading knowledge class this past Maymester. 

In addition to these pedagogical adventures, Wolkow serves as faculty advisor for the local chapter of Eta Sigma Phi and recently finished his last term as Chair of the Subcommittee of the CAMWS Greek Exam. Last spring, he was invited by the Franklin Residential College to give a talk that addressed some of the promises and pitfalls of applying Natural Language Processing to the textual analysis of Plato’s dialogues. 

Pictured: Data Analytics Pedagogy course 

At UGA Classics, we have developed a series of new courses that aim to bridge Mediterranean antiquity with STEM approaches and, by extension, computer science in the wider sense. These courses merge the ancient and the digital, represented by data science and interactive media. 

 In “Data Analytics Pedagogy for Classics,” running for the first time in fall 2025, students gain hands-on experience with data analysis and visualization in the form of geographic information systems, corpus linguistics, and network analysis. Using AI to assist with statistical analysis, students also enhance their AI literacy. Students learn to apply these tools to classical or wider ancient history problems, from recognizing and extracting data in primary source material to camera-ready visualizations that communicate their results and tell stories. The course equips students with practical digital skills to conduct data-driven and interdisciplinary research in the humanities.  

The forthcoming “Ancient Empires: A Gaming Approach (spring 2026)” combines active, experiential, and experimental learning in exploring the multifaceted topic of ancient empires, their evolution and management. Supplemented by lectures, students will use grand-strategy video games to investigate empire building and management mechanisms and motivations across the ancient Mediterranean. They will explore the interlocking areas of governance, diplomacy, military strategy, and resource management while comparing virtual models of history with historical realities. Not only will students get a sense of the differences between regions and periods, but they will also get a sense of how much historical (or humanities) work goes into developing video games that are grounded in human history. In this sense, the course also touches upon game design.  

Together, these courses foster a new generation of Classicists versed in both ancient worlds and modern technologies, while spearheading the use of video games as a teaching resource in historical disciplines.  

In addition to that, the generous support of the Willson Center for Humanities enabled us to host Franziska Naether from the Saxonian Academy of Sciences as a short-term visiting fellow in the fall semester. Her guest lecture "Eternal Voices: How Digital Humanities are Reshaping Ancient Studies" and her workshop "Research Data Management and Data Management Plans for Ancient Studies" highlight the intersection of Mediterranean Antiquity and STEM via their confluence in Digital Humanities, enriching UGA’s endeavors with perspectives from Continental Europe. 

Pictured: Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal manuscript 

We are delighted to share the wonderful news from Ben Elliott (MA Latin, 2024) that his new translation of John Cassian’s “On the Incarnation” has been accepted for publication by Paulist Press into the well-regarded series, Ancient Christian Writers, and will be released in the coming year.  

Elliot began his work on Cassian as a student at UGA. Having set his sights on a new translation, it soon became clear that the underlying Latin text also needed improvement. This began a journey of learning and discovery that has culminated in Elliot completing an entirely new Latin critical edition through a full re-appraisal of the manuscripts, many of which being examined for the first time, as well as a collection of medieval appropriations of Cassian by Alcuin which were discovered by Elliot in his research. He then also received a fellowship from the LECTIO Institute at KU Leuven and Brepols Publishers to travel to Belgium in the spring to complete the final details of his new edition [watch for it in the Alexander Room!]. 

Elliot continues to reside nearby in NE Atlanta with his family and is currently assembling the first-ever critical edition of “The Seven Books Against Felix” by Alcuin of York, which will hopefully be complete in 2026. He continues to enjoy poetry and ice hockey, but these days spends most of his time sitting by the phone, waiting to get the call to return to Athens and pick up a course as an adjunct in the department. Congratulations, Ben Elliot! 

Pictured: Eta Sigma Phi members at the UGA Homecoming parade 

Eta Sigma Phi, the on-campus Greek and Latin Honors society, celebrated the induction of four new members this semester. The society has fostered classical learning on campus through books sales, promoting Greek and Latin authors like Cicero, Homer, Euripides, etc. and other scholarly textbooks on ancient history, archeology, and art. The organization increased our visibility on campus by participating in Homecoming and designing a UGA Classics banner. Members of Eta Sigma Phi participated in the Homecoming parade by wearing togas and laurels, presenting a “UGA Classics” banner and partnering with the Senior Classical League.  

Within the society, members have presented research PowerPoints on our recent theme: Classics in the Classic City: Connecting Our Past and Present. Several students presented topics on their thoughts of modern adaptations of classical texts and myths and the application of ancient philosophies on the modern-day.  

Overall, Eta Sigma Phi strives to keep the ancient traditions, values, and virtues alive in the modern day by encouraging members to share their scholarly work and creative ideas on campus.   

For Maymester 2025, students studied the ancient and modern sites in Greece, Italy, France, England, and Scotland that are important for the culture and reception of Classical antiquity: the Parthenon Sculptures; the urban legacy of ancient Roman cities; the influence of landscape gardens and art in various periods: the Renaissance; Neoclassicism and Romanticism. The program will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2026. 

Twenty students from the University of Georgia spent three weeks exploring Croatia and Venice this last Maymester. Led by Profs. Jordan Pickett and Cari Goetcheus, students from a wide range of majors—biology, engineering, business, history and pre-law, as well as the professors’ home departments of Classics and historic preservation— traveled from Zagreb to the Adriatic. Working their way up the Adriatic coast, from Split to Zadar and Pula, the program concluded with several days in Venice (which controlled Croatia’s littoral for the better part of seven centuries, until 1797).  

Throughout these weeks, a vast spectrum of history and landscapes confronted our students: traveling and learning to look and study architecture and landscapes carefully in situ, while reading and discussing, is a transformative experience. For the professors, providing this experience was thrilling. 

 “We can see the difference travel makes in students' curiosity and engagement with the world around them,” said Pickett and Goetcheus.  

Moreover, the world is especially complex throughout the Adriatic, with deeply layered urban histories and landscapes. For instance, throughout their journey together, students and faculty visited modern cities known for their wealth of Roman archaeology, such as Split, where the emperor Diocletian’s Palace is remarkably well-preserved and became the nucleus of the medieval and modern town, as well as abandoned sites like the marvelously huge Roman-Byzantine city of Salona, and incredible cultural landscapes like the lunar island of Pag, where the group toured a two thousand-year-old olive grove and a famous cheese factory! Many students ate their first whole (grilled) fish in Dalmatia, and truffles were enjoyed in Istria, too.  

Another highlight for students was taking a ferry to the island of Brijuni, where Yugoslav dictator Josep Broz Tito had his summer villa: Tito followed the Romans there, as more than half a dozen ancient villas have been excavated on Brijuni in recent decades. For faculty, perhaps, another highlight was going to the Biennale in Venice where they walked with students there, to the other end of the Rialto and more than a mile from the hotel, and students had to navigate to find their own way home afterwards!  

The University of Georgia has been sending students to Croatia for nearly nineteen years, for a tapestry of transformative experiences, and the Classics department looks forward to more years ahead! 

UGA in Rome, one of the university’s two founding study away programs, is an experiential learning opportunity that truly transforms and inspires. Students get to walk among the city's storied ruins, winding streets, fountains, palaces, and churches to encounter the history of the world’s most famous emperors, saints, and artists first-hand. Experience the Eternal City to the lens of some of the faculty involved and students who attended UGA in Rome: 

Andres Matlock bids a farewell and takes on a new role 

Pictured: current UGA in Rome director Andres Matlock (left) and former UGA in Rome director Elena Bianchelli (right) 

2025 turned out to be quite a historic year for UGA in Rome. We already knew it was going to be a Jubilee year, with all that it means for the city: the pomp, the crowds of pilgrims and onlookers, and the freshly restored monuments. Then, after the death of Pope Francis just weeks before we were set to depart, the election of Pope Leo added another level of excitement for many of our students, who were especially keen to see the first American pope. But, for the history of UGA in Rome, the most significant event of the year was the retirement of Director Elena Bianchelli. Elena served the program in many capacities over the course of nearly 40 years, including 11 years as the director.  

For me, she has been a wonderful guide, thoughtful traveling companion, and dear friend. I know that every student who traveled with her over her long tenure remembers her fondly and appreciates the legacy she leaves behind: her dedication, kindness, and unfailing recommendations for the best “gelaterie” in Rome. We held the final group meal of this summer's program in her honor, and I hope that many of those reading this newsletter will join us in celebrating and congratulating Elena. 

UGA in Rome shaped Katie McGehee college experience 

Pictured: Kate McGehee (right) and friend, Riley Wilder (left) 

My name is Kate McGehee, and I am a third-year English major in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. This past summer, I participated in the UGA in Rome program, and months later, I can still say it was one of the most rewarding experiences during my time at UGA.  

This unique four-week program gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in a new culture while exploring the historical connections between ancient and modern Rome. The city itself became our classroom as we spent each day visiting iconic landmarks from the Trevi Fountain to the Colosseum.  

The program also provided plenty of free time for me and my classmates to embark on our own adventures, whether that be trying out different Italian restaurants and browsing local shops, or strolling through ancient parks and even attending an Ed Sheeran concert in Rome’s Olympic Stadium!  

Above all else, however, my study abroad experience in Rome has brought me lifelong friendships with other UGA students who continue to shape my college experience back in Athens, GA.  

First-year master’s student, Eli Peacock is still inspired by UGA in Rome 

Pictured: Eli Peacock  

For a month, I woke up next to the Colosseum, a wonder of the ancient world and our modern metro stop. This summer, I was lucky enough to go on the UGA in Rome program with Director Matlock and Director Bianchelli.  

As we experienced the Eternal City, our professors encouraged us to consider the layers of history shaped over thousands of years. I went expecting the ancient world but found myself enthralled by everything between now and then.  

We learned about Renaissance palazzi and Grand Tour collections and modern rediscoveries. Our professors taught us to critically examine the context of creation but also the contexts of preservation that allow us to see slices of the ancient world today. Though any trip to Rome would certainly contain great wonder, there was so very much to gain from the brilliant professors and peers I was able to learn from.  

From ascending Athens’ Akropolis on our first morning to visiting Rome’s Trevi on our last, this program was truly inspiring, and I cannot more highly recommend it.