Ellen Morris, Keynote Speaker and Respondent
Assistant Professor, Department of Classics and Ancient Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University

Ellen Morris has published extensively on issues pertinent to ancient Egyptian imperialism. Her first book is entitled The Architecture of Imperialism: Military Bases and the Evolution of Foreign Policy in Egypt’s New Kingdom (Brill, 2005), and she is currently in the process of finishing a book entitled Egyptian Imperialism (under contract to Blackwell Press). Her ongoing research interests and other publications focus on the dynamics of political fragmentation, state formation, sexuality and sacred performance, retainer sacrifice, and divine kingship. She has excavated in the Nile Valley at Abydos and Mendes, and at the site of Amheida in the Dakhleh Oasis. Morris did her graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania and earned her B.A. from Barnard College in Ancient Studies.

Lee Ann Custer
University of Pennsylvania
Art History

Lee Ann Custer is a doctoral student in History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her B.A. from Harvard University in 2010. Her research focuses on modern architectural history and theory, with specific interest in issues of access, authorship, and identity formation in urban built environments.

Megan Dickman
Bryn Mawr College
Classics

Megan Dickman attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she earned her BA, majoring in Classics, Anthropology, Art History, and Classical Humanities. She is currently in her third year at Bryn Mawr College and is working on an MA concerning the use of time in Sophocles’ Electra. Her research interests include Latin Poetry, Comedy and its reception, as well as Ancient Ethnography.

Natalie Fleming
University of Buffalo
American Studies

Natalie Fleming is a PhD student in the American Studies program within the University at Buffalo’s Transnational Studies Department.  In 2012, she received her Master’s degree in art history at Rutgers University as well as certificates in historic preservation and curatorial studies. Since graduating, she has worked as the Art Resource Curator for the University at Buffalo Department of Art and teaches modern, post-modern and American survey art history courses at UB as well as the Rochester Institute of Technology.  Her current research attends to issues of authenticity, neutrality, gender, and race in nineteenth-century photography discourse, focusing on Western landscape photographer Carleton Watkins and his network of patrons.

Irene Han
University of California, Los Angeles
Classics

Irene Han graduated from Columbia University and is a PhD candidate at UCLA in the Classics Department. She specializes in political theory and ancient philosophy. She is writing her dissertation on utopia and the female body in Plato’s Republic, Laws and Timaeus. She is also working on another project that looks at Ovid’s Metamorphoses, specifically the Medusa and Pygmalion episodes, through a Lacanian/ Žižekian lens.

Morgan Hunter
University of California, Berkeley
Classics

Morgan Hunter is a Classics graduate student at UC Berkeley, with Candidacy status (all exams passed, including orals; working on dissertation). Her area of research is ancient religion, especially in a comparative and historical context. She tends to associate expensive public rituals and artifacts more with political issues, especially warfare, military alliances, and defensive preparations, than with timeless natural concerns like fertility. She also has interests in Greek tragedy and comparative linguistics.

Emily Moore
Bryn Mawr College
Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology

Emily Moore is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. She received her B.A. at the University of Rhode Island and she completed her M.A. at Bryn Mawr College. Her dissertation examines Roman visual representations of northern barbarians and the relationship between these images and Roman imperialism. She has excavated at Pompeii and Cosa in Italy, as well as worked at several art museums and collections. Her research interests include: Roman art and archaeology, sculpture, methods of production and the question of ‘copies’, archaeological theory, imperialism, and spolia.

Kiersten Mounce
University of Delaware
Art History

Kiersten Mounce is a doctoral student in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware. In 2014, she completed an MA at the University of Oregon with a focus on twentieth-century European design. Her current research interests include the use of objects in liberatory practices and the interaction between design and politics in Modern Europe.

Jordan Rogers
University of Pennsylvania
Ancient History

Jordan Rogers attended Indiana University where he received a BA in Classical Studies and an MA in Latin Literature under the guidance of his mentor and adviser Dr. Eleanor W. Leach. Jordan is currently in his first year of graduate study as a PhD student in the Ancient History program at the University of Pennsylvania. Given his varied scholarly influences, Jordan’s interests range from cultural theory and historiography to economic systems and their history.

Rachel Starry
Bryn Mawr College
Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology

Rachel is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. She earned her BA in Classical Civilization in 2011 from the University of Richmond, and she received her MA from Bryn Mawr College in 2013. Her research has explored such issues as burial practice, imperialism, and urban development in cities throughout the Roman Empire. She has participated in fieldwork in Italy and is currently working at Hacımusalar Höyük in Lycia (southwestern Turkey).

Katie Tipton
University of Calgary
Greek and Roman Studies

Katie Tipton is in her final year as a PhD student in Roman Archaeology specializing in housing. Her interests are in field survey and excavation throughout the Mediterranean, Greek and Roman
housing, and urban infrastructure in its social, economic and political context. Past excavations and surveys in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the UK have provided unique opportunities to study housing and urban infrastructure in the ancient city.