Yale Department of Classics

05/28/2026

New Pasts Imperfect (5.28.26) https://pasts-imperfect.ghost.io/pasts-imperfect-5-28-26/ This week, ancient historian Tara Mulder discusses her new book, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome, critical fabulation, and other methods for writing lost histories. Then, brewing beer during the Qin dynasty; marginalia within Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew philosophical traditions; infants wrapped in Tyrian purple textiles in late antique York; repatriating ancient Jain manuscripts; scholarly 'eu**ch phobia' when discussing Ancient Persia; reports on the attacks on faculty free speech and tenure; new ancient world journals; and much more.

This week, ancient historian Tara Mulder discusses her new book, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome, critical fabulation, and other methods for writing lost histories. Then, brewing beer during the Qin dynasty; marginalia within Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew philosophical....

05/27/2026

Congratulations to Classics and Ancient History PhD student Daniel Graves, who has won this year's John Addison Porter prize for his dissertation on Thomas Jefferson and the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns. Read more about Danny’s dissertation project here:

With the United States’ 250th anniversary on the horizon, many Americans are reflecting on the nation’s past. Early in his graduate studies, Daniel Graves PhD ’26 (Classics and History) became intrigued by the role of the classics in shaping early national America. In his dissertation, Graves ...

05/14/2026

New Pasts Imperfect (5.14.26) https://pasts-imperfect.ghost.io/pasts-imperfect-5-14-26/ This week, medievalist Matthew Vernon discusses Beowulf, Blackness, and the film Sinners (2025). Then, the ACLS, AHA, and MLA win the day for NEH grantees; dendrochronology and medieval Japanese aurorae; using pitch to examine where Roman boats were repaired; open access books on Serving the Christian State in Late Antiquity and Synchronizing the Body in Ancient Medicine and Philosophy; rebuilding the Ziggurat of Ur; a new cartoon introduces kids to medieval Islamic scholars; new ancient world journals; celebrating Nubian Month at Chicago's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures; and much more.

This week, medievalist Matthew Vernon discusses Beowulf, Blackness, and the film Sinners (2025). Then, the ACLS, AHA, and MLA win the day for NEH grantees; dendrochronology and medieval Japanese aurorae; using pitch to examine where Roman boats were repaired; open access books on Serving the Christi...

05/12/2026

As we continue to celebrate the achievements of our students, today we recognize Alejandro Quintana, graduate of the combined PhD program in Classics and History, who has won a prestigious Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) at Trinity College, Cambridge. Alejandro researches the cultural history of Greco-Roman Egypt, and particularly questions of migration and rural society. Well done!

Alejandro Quintana is a sixth-year PhD candidate in the combined program in Classics and History. His research encompasses the socio-cultural history of Greco-Roman Egypt, with an emphasis on migration and rural society. He is currently writing a dissertation titled “Mobility Makes History: Human ...

05/06/2026

Congratulations to Yale Classics faculty Ben Kruchió and Erika Valdivieso, whose
“Yalebridge” event has been profiled on the MacMillan Center website! This year’s event brought students and professors from the University of Cambridge to Yale for a three-day conference, focused on the topic “Antiquity and Environment”.

In its second year, this exchange convened scholars across disparate countries and fields of study to examine ancient conceptions of the natural world.

04/22/2026

Congratulations to Tom Zhuohun Wang, PhD student in the combined program in History and Classics, who was named this morning as a winner of the prestigious Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome! During his fellowship year of 2026-7, Tom will be working on his dissertation about the economic and political history of the Roman Empire. Well done, Tom!

The American Academy in Rome is proud to announce today the recipients of the 2026–27 Rome Prize and Italian Fellows Program.

04/20/2026

Just Published Ancient Persian: A Linguistic History by
Kevin T. van Bladel https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ancient-persian/9B13F078E16D6952763F631B484F03D2 The ebook is open access
"When ancient Persian conquerors created a vast empire from the Mediterranean to the Indus, encompassing many peoples speaking many different languages, they triggered demographic changes that caused their own language to be transformed. Persian grammar has ever since borne testimony to the social history of the ancient Persian Empire. This study of the early evolution of the Persian language bridges ancient history and new linguistics. Written for historians, philologists, linguists, and classical scholars, as well as those interested specifically in Persian and Iranian studies, it explains the correlation between the character of a language's grammar and the history of its speakers. It paves the way for new investigations into linguistic history, a field complimentary with but distinct from historical linguistics."
The Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Yale University Cambridge University Press - History, Classics and Archaeology

Cambridge Core - Arabic and Middle Eastern Language and Linguistics - Ancient Persian

04/16/2026

We're happy to announce that Erika Valdivieso, Assistant Professor of Classics and Director of Graduate Studies for the Program in Early Modern Studies, has a received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for her next project "Atlantic Georgic" https://www.acls.org/fellow-grantees/erika-valdivieso/

04/16/2026

New Pasts Imperfect Pasts Imperfect (4.16.26) https://pasts-imperfect.ghost.io/pasts-imperfect-4-16-26/
This week, scholar of the ancient Mediterranean and India Tejas S. Aralere discusses ancient astrology in South Asia. Then, what medieval chess can tell us about race relations in the Middle Ages, new interactive maps of late antique church councils, encouraging Classics in China, ancient Native American dice games, lost English dual pronouns, the pope reads about Augustine and his African roots, remembering Dame Prof. Averil Cameron, new ancient world journals, the Sunoikisis summer session, and more.

This week, scholar of the ancient Mediterranean and India Tejas S. Aralere discusses ancient astrology in South Asia. Then, what medieval chess can tell us about race relations in the Middle Ages, new interactive maps of late antique church councils, encouraging Classics in China, ancient Native Ame...

04/13/2026

Congratulations to Amia Davis, student in the combined Classics and History program at Yale, who has won a prestigious, three-year postdoctoral fellowship to the University of Michigan Society of Fellows. Amia, a cultural and military historian of the Roman Empire, was one of only six fellows chosen from a pool of over 1660. We wish you all the best in this exciting next step of your career!

The Michigan Society of Fellows has selected six new members out of over 1,660 applicants to serve three-year appointments as postdoctoral fellows and non-tenure track assistant professors, beginning this fall.

04/10/2026

Professor of Classics James Uden contributes a chapter: "Aeneas’ Body and Social Suffering in the Aeneid" https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110728811-004/html to the recently published collection, Body and Medicine in Latin Poetry edited by Chiara Blanco, Allegra Hahn and Simona Martorana
"Medical anthropologists have used the term ‘social suffering’ to describe the ways in which a population’s pain is channeled into communal scripts, which express some perspectives while excluding others. This chapter explores the Aeneid as a text that similarly channels Roman pain, and invites audience identification with the suffering of Aeneas. The doctor Iapyx fails to cure Aeneas of his arrow wound in Aeneid 12, consistent with a broader motif of the failure of human methods of healing in Virgil’s poetry. Yet that episode also allows the poet, at a climactic point in the epic, to emphasise Aeneas’ submission to forces beyond his control. The hero’s experience of physical pain — with all its confusion and frustration — makes him an object of identification for audiences confronting their own pain in Augustan Rome."

Aeneas’ Body and Social Suffering in the Aeneid was published in Body and Medicine in Latin Poetry on page 65.