Fourteenth Annual Tennessee Undergraduate Classics Research Conference

The Fourteenth Annual Tennessee Undergraduate Classics Research Conference is sponsored by the Classics Enrichment Fund of the Department of Classics, with generous co-sponsorship by Bettye Beaumont, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, the Marco Institute, and the Departments of Africana Studies, English, History, Political Science, Religious Studies, and World Languages and Cultures. With special thanks to Jessica Westerhold, Aleydis Van de Moortel, and Andrew Montgomery.

Student Organizing Committee: CC Hazelton, Natalie Newsome, Everett Rich, Reese Riley, Kate Wolfe, & Lauren Wood

Faculty Organizer: Charles Kuper, Assistant Professor of Classics

Staff Organizers: Amber Tipton (McClung Humanities), Christina Brown (CAS), & Marin Wooley (CAS)

Schedule of Events

Overview

• 8:30–9:00 a.m., Check-In and Registration — Strong Hall 106
• 9:00–9:15 a.m., Welcome Address — Strong Hall B1
• 9:15–10:15 a.m., Beaumont Keynote Lecture — Strong Hall B1
• 10:15–10:30 a.m., Morning Break  — Strong Hall 106
• 10:30 am–12:00 p.m., Session 1 (Panels 1A–C)
• 12:10–1:10 p.m., Lunch Break — Strong Hall 106
• 12:20–1:10 p.m., Optional Professionalization Workshop — Strong Hall 101
• 1:15–2:45 p.m., Session 2 (Panels 2A–C)
• 2:45–3:00 p.m., Afternoon Break — Strong Hall 106
• 3:00–4:45 pm:, Session 3 (Panels 3A–C)
• 4:50–5:30 pm:, Closing Remarks and Reception — Strong Hall 106

Check-In and Registration

8:30–9:00 a.m.

Strong Hall 106

Welcome Address

9:00–9:15 a.m.

Strong Hall B1

John Zomchick, Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Beaumont Keynote Lecture

9:15–10:15 a.m.

Strong Hall B1

Cognitive Wordfare: A Roman Argument for Military History

Dr. Jessica Clark, Associate Professor of Classics, Florida State University

Morning Break

10:15–10:30 a.m.

Strong Hall 106

Session 1 (Panels 1A–C)

10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Panel 1A: Classics and Modern Politics 

Strong Hall 101

1. . Cicero, Reagan, and Obama: Speeches on Immigration Across Two Eras
   • Claire Wilcox-Black, University of Rochester
2. Appropriating Antiquity: The Far-Right’s Usage of the Classical World and the Enduring Impact on Classics
   • Zoe Miner, Florida State University
3. Piety, Power, and Paranoia: Religious Anxiety from Pliny the Younger to Cold War America
   • Taylor Goodin, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
4. Re-evaluating Athenian Democracy Through a Historiographical Study: How Does Modern Politics Influence Our Retellings of History?
   • Heather C. Halili, University of South Florida

Panel 1B: Gender and Material Culture

Strong Hall 103

Chair: Reema Habib

1. Ancient Echoes: An Examination of Female Sexuality and Desire in Religion and Art within the Time Periods of Ancient Mesopotamia and Archaic Greece
   • Annabel Thrush, James Madison University
2. Minoan Frescoes: Gender Conventions and Exceptions
   • Mary Sabourin, University of Ottawa
3. Local Iterations of Fertility: Isis Lochia at Stobi
   • Madison Beaman, Hollins University
4. God is a Woman?: The Minoan Goddess and the Importance of Archaeological Epistemology
   • Chelsea Hoyt, University of South Florida

Panel 1C: (Mostly) Latin Poetry I

Strong Hall B1

Chair: Nikola Golubovic

1. 1. Frontem Nugis Solvere Disce Meis: Martial 14.183 and the Callimachean Batrachomyomachia
   • Zachary Chen, Hillsdale College
2. The Signature of Sulpicia
   • Eleanor Riggs, University of Florida
3. Virgil’s Eclogue to Nowhere?
   • Alessandro Carleton, Tufts University
4. Structis cantat avenis: Pastoral Voices and Genre in Tibullus
   • John Rogers, Harvard College

Lunch Break      

12:10–1:10 p.m.

Strong Hall 106          

Optional Professionalization Workshop                              

12:20–1:10 p.m.

Strong Hall 101

Panelists: Justin Arft, Sam Blankenship, Lorenzo Del Monte

Session 2 (Panels 2A–C)

1:15–2:45 p.m.

Panel 2A: Material, Technology, and Memory

Strong Hall 101

Chair: Aleydis Van de Moortel

1. Revelations in Light: Shaping Atmospheres at Hierapolis
   • Shasta Power, Hollins University
2. The damnatio memoriae of Elagabalus: The Timeline of Erasure and the Struggle to Make Sense of What Remains
   • Amari Pavati, Binghamton University
3. Beyond Geology: The Cultural and Psychological Foundations of the Delphic Oracle
   • Emma Hensley, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
4. Using LLMs to read the Greek Antigone in Chinese
   • Beining (Sue) Wu, Tufts University

Panel 2B: Body and Soul 

Strong Hall 103

Chair: Sam Blankenship 

1. “So, Who’s the Man?”: The Masculinization of Female Homoeroticism by Roman Authors
   • Malayna Torres, Hollins University
2. “Let the Goddess Guide”: Athena, Columbia, and the Female Figure of Imperial Ideology
   • Bridget Goguen, Providence College
3. Stoic Consolation for the Heavenly Life in John Chrysostom’s Letters to Olympias
   • Brin Copp, Sewanee: University of the South
4. Celsus’ Cures for Depression: An Approach to Melancholia in Antiquity
   • Emmabeth Whitehurst, Hollins University

Panel 2C: (Mostly) Latin Poetry II

Strong Hall B1

Chair: Jessica Westerhold

1. Holding On to Power: The Erinyes’ Partiality in Aeschylus’ The Eumenides as a Defense of Chthonic Authority
   • Robert Keeton, Hillsdale College
2. Ovid, Iphigenia, and Orestes as Exiles in Ovid’s Exile Poetry
   • Emma Buhrman, Trinity University
3. Both and Neither: Dialectical Gendering in Ovid’s “Iphis and Ianthe”
   • Anna Hillesheim, Agnes Scott College
4. Metaphorical Doors, Real Barriers: The Role of Doors in Elegy
   • Alexander Wyrick, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Afternoon Break

2:45–3:00 p.m.

Strong Hall 106

Session 3 (Panels 3A–C)

3:00–4:45 p.m.

Panel 3A: Tragedy and Gender

Strong Hall 101

Chair: Justin Arft

1. Foreign Wives and Fragile States: Marriage, Law, and Identity in Classical Athens and Augustan Rome
   • Courtney Chaplin, Agnes Scott College
2. The Dangers of Temptation from Hesiod’s Pandora: The Reception of Women in Classical Athenian Drama
   • Nora Ognibene, University of Vermont
3. Passion, Fate and an Encomium of Medea: Applying Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen to Euripides’ Medea
   • Amanda Hubbard, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
4. A Different Deianeira: The Mythological Construction of Deianeira in Women of Trachis
   • Keaton McGee, University of Houston

Panel 3B: Small and Large Objects

Strong Hall 103

Chair: Dylan Bloy

1. Fire and Stone in Ancient Greece (1100 BCE–31 BCE): Testing Theophrastus’s Thermal Taxonomy as an Archaeothermometer
   • Natalie Newsome, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
2. Put a Pin in It: Bone Pins at Gabii in Context
   • Karleigh Belli, University of South Carolina
3. Whey, Wine, and Ancient Greek Baby Feeders
   • Reese Aksamit, University of Mississippi
4. The Getty Kouros: A Problematic Piece Whether Authentic or Not
   • Harley Diamond, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Closing Remarks and Reception

4:50–5:30 p.m.

Strong Hall 106

Charles Kuper

Previous Conference Programs

• 2025 Program
• 2024 Program
• 2022 Program
• 2020 Program
• 2019 Program
• 2018 Program
• 2017 Program