Faculty and Staff

Mary C. English, professor and Chair, received a PhD at Boston University. Her research interests include Greek drama and the reinterpretation of these plays by contemporary American playwrights. She has also published extensively on Latin pedagogy. She teaches a variety of courses including Greek and Latin language classes at all levels, as well as courses in classical civilization and literature. She is the author, most recently, of A New Latin Primer with Georgia L. Irby, which was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press.

Victoria Larson, professor and Deputy Chair, received a PhD from McMaster University and an M. Litt. from Oxford University. Her research interests include: the dramatic and philosophical writings of Seneca the Younger, classical tradition, and reception (especially as they relate to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), and the critical theory of life- and travel writing. She teaches a variety of courses including Beginning and Intermediate Latin, Latin Literature, Mythology and the Senior Humanities Seminar. She is the director of the Institute for the Humanities and the author of the following books: The Role of Description in Senecan Tragedy in series Studien zur klassischen Philologie (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), ed. M. von Albrecht, University of Heidelberg, Ma Double Vie: The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999) and My Beloved Toto: Letters from Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo 1833-1882 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005).

Aditya Adarkar, associate professor, received a PhD from the University of Chicago. He is a broadly trained humanist and comparativist and was appointed as the university’s first Asian Humanities specialist. His research interests include: Sanskrit epic and its ethical and literary dimensions, South Asian philosophical and literary traditions, mindfulness and contemplative pedagogy. He teaches courses including: Reading Asian Cultures, Mythology, and Comparative Epic. He is the author of numerous articles and reviews, and has published in the Journal of Asian Studies, History of Religions, and the International Journal of Hindu Studies. He is currently working on a book-length study of the psychological depth, subtlety and complexity of the character of Karna in the Mahabharata.

Jean Alvares, professor, received a PhD in Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include: Classical Narrative, the Western Humanities Tradition, Utopian Thought and Learning with Technology. He teaches courses including: General Humanities I and II, Mythology, Proseminar: Liberal Arts Internship and Seminar: Inquiry in the Humanities.

Sulochana R. Asirvatham, professor, received a PhD in Classics from Columbia University. Her main research focus is on the “use and abuse” of Alexander the Great’s image for ideological purposes, especially by Roman imperial authors; her interest in the great Macedonian conqueror’s afterlife has also led to publications on Alexander’s presence in the medieval Persian, Arabic and Ethiopic traditions. She has additionally published numerous scholarly commentaries on ancient Greek historians whose original works have been lost but exist as “fragments” within other ancient and medieval authors, as part of Brill’s New Jacoby, a large-scale international project that has undertaken to revise one of the great landmarks of early 20th-century scholarship. She teaches Ancient Greek and Latin language courses from the beginning to advanced levels, Greek Civilization and General Humanities I, as well as history seminars on Classical Athens, Alexander the Great, and the Hellenistic World.

Alison L. Beringer, associate professor, received a PhD in German from Princeton University. Her research interests include Latin and vernacular texts and their manuscript transmission and illustration in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern. She has recently taught courses on medieval women and gender and Viking mythology. She is the author of The Sight of Semiramis: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Babylonian Queen, published by Arizona State University Press (2016). The book is a study of the literary and artistic representations of the title figure from the early Middle Ages to the seventeenth century.

Deborah Chatr Aryamontri, assistant professor, received a PhD in Ancient Topography from the Consortium of the Universities of Roma –La Sapienza, Salerno, Viterbo and Lecce in Italy. Her research interests include Roman landscape archaeology and urban planning, reception of the classical world, practice and issues of Cultural Heritage. She teaches courses including Classical archaeology, field methods in Mediterranean archaeology, Roman civilization, ancient technology, the city of Rome and mythology. She is also a research associate of the Center for Heritage and Archaeological Studies and since 2010, she is the director of the ‘Villa of the Antonines’ project in Italy.

Senta German, associate professor, received a PhD from Columbia University. Her research interests include: Aegean prehistory, history of women, illicit antiquities trade, museum pedagogy. She teaches courses including: General Humanities I, Greek Civilization, Selected Topics in Interdisciplinary Humanities. In addition, German also teaches Art History in the Department of Art and Design.

Glen Robert Gill, associate professor, received a PhD from McMaster University. His research interests include Theories of Myth (esp. Northrop Frye, C.G. Jung, and Joseph Campbell), Literary Theory and Criticism, Depth Psychology, Phenomenology, Biblical Studies, Classical Mythology, Celtic Mythology, Twentieth-Century Literature (esp. J.R.R. Tolkien), and Popular Culture. He teaches a variety of courses including Principles of Mythic Symbolism, J.R.R. Tolkien: The Mythology of Middle-Earth, Celtic Mythology, Classical Mythology, Myth and Popular Culture, Humanities I, and Honors Great Books I. He is author of Northrop Frye and the Phenomenology of Myth, the editor of Northrop Frye’s Writings on Twentieth-Century Literature, and is currently working on a book on J.R.R. Tolkien.

Prudence Jones, professor, received a PhD from Harvard University. Her research interests include Latin literature, Augustan Rome, Cleopatra VII, and ancient geography. She teaches language courses in Greek and Latin at all levels as well as Humanities courses on Roman Civilization, Cleopatra, The Augustan Age, and Africa in Classical Antiquity. She is the author of the books Reading Rivers in Roman Literature and Culture, Cleopatra: a Sourcebook, Cleopatra, and Africa: Greek and Roman Perspectives from Homer to Apuleius. Her article, “Cleopatra’s Cocktail” was the topic of stories in USA Today, Der Spiegel, and NBCnews.com. She was featured as a Cleopatra expert in “Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer” which aired on Discovery Channel in 2009.

Timothy Renner, professor, received a PhD in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan after completing his undergraduate degree at Yale University. His research interests include Roman history and archaeology; papyrology both documentary and literary; and Greek and Roman historiography. His current projects concern the “Villa degli Antonini” imperial villa site in the Alban Hills, the evidence in ancient documents for the activities of imperial slaves and freedmen, and the editing of a Hellenistic historical papyrus treating native rebellions in Egypt. He teaches courses on ancient Mediterranean history and archaeology, especially Roman; on Roman law; and on Greek and Latin language. He is the director of the Montclair State University Center for Heritage and Archaeological Studies and coordinator of the Archaeology Minor.

Patricia Salzman, professor, received a DPhil in Classics from Oxford University. Her research interests include Latin poetry, especially Ovid and Latin Elegy, gender approaches to Antiquity and reception studies, in particular, the classical tradition in modern cinema and in Latin American art and literature. She teaches courses including Beginning and Intermediate Latin, Mythology, Troy and the Trojan War, Select Topics in Latin Literature, The Elegy, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Ancient World. She has published numerous articles on Latin literature and the Classical tradition and she is also the author of A Web of Fantasies. Gaze, Image and Gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Ohio State University Press, 2005); co-editor with Genevieve Liveley of Latin Elegy and Narratology. Fragments of Story (Ohio State University Press, 2008), co-editor with Lauren Hackworth Petersen of Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome(University of Texas Press, 2012) and co-author with Jean Alvares of Classical Myth and Film in the New Millennium (Oxford University Press, 2017).