Workshop Participants 2014-2015
During the 2014-15 Academic Year the Mellon Workshop will run concurrently with the seminar "Borders and Boundaries in the post-Classical Mediterranean," organized by Reyhan Durmaz and funded by the Graduate International Colloquium Fund.
Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos (Mellon Workshop coordinator)
Rebecca is a Ph.D. candidate (6th year) in the Department of Religious Studies. Her dissertation examines the role of public ritual and cult life in the Christianization of Constantinople during the fourth and early fifth centuries C.E. Her broad research interests include religious diversity in Late Antiquity, strategies used in the promulgation of a normative Christian cultural identity, and the role of memory and topography in the creation of Christian landscapes.
Scott DiGiulio
Scott is a Ph.D. Candidate (6th year) in the Department of Classics, writing a dissertation entitled “Aulus Gellius, the Noctes Atticae, and the Literary Logic of Miscellany under the High Roman Empire,” which explores the literary techniques of Gellius' miscellany in their Roman and Second Sophistic contexts. Scott has also participated in the ASCSA Summer Session in 2011, and is a fellow of the Advanced Seminar in the Humanities at Venice International University in 2013-14. His research interests include Second Sophistic literary and intellectual culture; identity in the ancient world; Roman satire; and multilingualism and code-switching.
Ian Randall
Ian will be in his fourth year of the Ph.D. at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. His current research focuses on early medieval Cyprus, the transitions that occurred in material culture during the Arab-Byzantine Condominium and the Lusignan Dynasty, and the implications this may have for developing a more nuanced picture of the decision making processes that shaped group identity.
Daria Resh
Daria is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Classics. A native of Yekaterinburg (the Urals, Russia), she earned her MA in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at St Petersburg State University, with a thesis on the problems of genre and self-representation in the writings of Symeon of Thessalonica (early 15th century). She participated in the Medieval Greek Summer School at Dumbarton Oaks (2010), and presented a paper at XXII International Congress in Byzantine Studies (Sofia, 2011). Daria is interested in rhetorical theory and literary circles in 10th century Constantinople, as well as the reception of classical and medieval texts in modern Greek literature.
Dan Ruppel
"Reception" and "persistence" are the guiding terms in Dan’s work, which takes him across the fields of translation studies, archaeology, critical theory, and theatrical practice as he searches to elaborate the ways in which lived experience becomes story, and how history translates "back" into lived performance. He will be entering his fourth year as a PhD student in Brown's department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies this fall, and looks forward to mining the rare book libraries of the Northeast for elegant illuminated manuscripts that purport to describe preposterously expensive spectacles.
Reyhan Durmaz (Graduate International Colloquium coordinator)
Reyhan is a third-year graduate student in the Department of Religious Studies, studying Late Antiquity and Syriac Christianity. In addition to ecclesiastical architecture and the monastic and hagiographic traditions of the Syriac Church, her research interests include comparative hagiography between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages, with a focus on the notion of sanctity.
Stevie Hull
Stevie is a third year student in the Department of Classics. She is currently completing a special topic exam on Greek biography and a special author exam on Augustine and classical education. Next year she is hoping to begin a dissertation on social networks and friendship in the 4th century CE that will combine her interests in both Greek and Latin biographies, letters, homilies and philosophical discourses.
Faculty Sponsors
Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religious Studies
Jonathan Conant, Assistant Professor of History
Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos (Mellon Workshop coordinator)
Rebecca is a Ph.D. candidate (6th year) in the Department of Religious Studies. Her dissertation examines the role of public ritual and cult life in the Christianization of Constantinople during the fourth and early fifth centuries C.E. Her broad research interests include religious diversity in Late Antiquity, strategies used in the promulgation of a normative Christian cultural identity, and the role of memory and topography in the creation of Christian landscapes.
Scott DiGiulio
Scott is a Ph.D. Candidate (6th year) in the Department of Classics, writing a dissertation entitled “Aulus Gellius, the Noctes Atticae, and the Literary Logic of Miscellany under the High Roman Empire,” which explores the literary techniques of Gellius' miscellany in their Roman and Second Sophistic contexts. Scott has also participated in the ASCSA Summer Session in 2011, and is a fellow of the Advanced Seminar in the Humanities at Venice International University in 2013-14. His research interests include Second Sophistic literary and intellectual culture; identity in the ancient world; Roman satire; and multilingualism and code-switching.
Ian Randall
Ian will be in his fourth year of the Ph.D. at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. His current research focuses on early medieval Cyprus, the transitions that occurred in material culture during the Arab-Byzantine Condominium and the Lusignan Dynasty, and the implications this may have for developing a more nuanced picture of the decision making processes that shaped group identity.
Daria Resh
Daria is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Classics. A native of Yekaterinburg (the Urals, Russia), she earned her MA in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at St Petersburg State University, with a thesis on the problems of genre and self-representation in the writings of Symeon of Thessalonica (early 15th century). She participated in the Medieval Greek Summer School at Dumbarton Oaks (2010), and presented a paper at XXII International Congress in Byzantine Studies (Sofia, 2011). Daria is interested in rhetorical theory and literary circles in 10th century Constantinople, as well as the reception of classical and medieval texts in modern Greek literature.
Dan Ruppel
"Reception" and "persistence" are the guiding terms in Dan’s work, which takes him across the fields of translation studies, archaeology, critical theory, and theatrical practice as he searches to elaborate the ways in which lived experience becomes story, and how history translates "back" into lived performance. He will be entering his fourth year as a PhD student in Brown's department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies this fall, and looks forward to mining the rare book libraries of the Northeast for elegant illuminated manuscripts that purport to describe preposterously expensive spectacles.
Reyhan Durmaz (Graduate International Colloquium coordinator)
Reyhan is a third-year graduate student in the Department of Religious Studies, studying Late Antiquity and Syriac Christianity. In addition to ecclesiastical architecture and the monastic and hagiographic traditions of the Syriac Church, her research interests include comparative hagiography between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages, with a focus on the notion of sanctity.
Stevie Hull
Stevie is a third year student in the Department of Classics. She is currently completing a special topic exam on Greek biography and a special author exam on Augustine and classical education. Next year she is hoping to begin a dissertation on social networks and friendship in the 4th century CE that will combine her interests in both Greek and Latin biographies, letters, homilies and philosophical discourses.
Faculty Sponsors
Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religious Studies
Jonathan Conant, Assistant Professor of History