News & Events
2024 Classical Studies Graduate Reception
Congratulations to this years Classical Studies prize recipients!
Congratulations Seniors on your election to Phi Beta Kappa!
Classical Studies offers a multidisciplinary approach to the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome and the broader Mediterranean world. Our students take courses in the languages (Greek and Latin) and literature, archaeology, history, mythology, and religion of these societies presented both in their historical context and as avenues for current inquiry. Classical Studies connects us to a shared past which expands our notions of the present, and offers a new language with which to think about - and change – the modern world.
The Department is delighted to welcome two new faculty members in the 24-25 academic year: Torie Burmeister and Mira Seo.
Torie BURMEISTER will be a visiting assistant professor. She got a BA at Skidmore College with a double major in French and Classics, a post-bac certificate in Classical Languages from the University of Pennsylvania, and her PhD this past year from Boston University. Her dissertation was on “Witches and Space in Ancient Roman Literature from Horace to Apuleius.” She will be teaching Greek and Latin at the introductory and intermediate levels, and in the fall a CLST courses on “Witches and Magic.”
Mira SEO is coming to us as a Provost’s Equity Fellow. She got her BA at Swarthmore College, another BA at Oxford, and her PhD at Princeton.
A specialist in Roman poetry, she became a tenured associate professor at the University of Michigan, in the Departments of Classical Studies and Comparative Literature. In 2012 she was recruited to the inaugural faculty of Yale-NUS College, a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore. Since January 2023, Mira has served as Vice Provost of Fulbright University in Viet Nam.
Mira has published on Roman poetry of the first century CE, the neo-Latin poetry of Juan Latino, an African Latinist in 16th century Granada, and diversifying Classics. She is currently writing on comparative readings in ancient literature, and leading Vitis Vinifera Antiqua, an interdisciplinary digital humanities collaboration on ancient wine.
She will work with us to create new approaches to the Classical Studies curriculum. In the fall term, she will be teaching a course on ancient epics and modern gangster movies.
