John Rowe Workman Assistant Professor of Classics

Overview

An alumna of Brown Classics and Literary Arts, Dr. Eccleston's research in ancient Greek and Roman Studies often interrogates the relationship between materials, identity, and the politics of (ethnic, racial, geographic, embodied) difference, especially during and in anticipation of large scale sociopolitical shifts. Literature is her primary object of analysis, but her work also includes texts, more broadly construed, visual art, and the built environment.  Her research is especially interested in the cultures of the Roman Empire and archaic Greek speaking communities and figuring out how/why the British Empire,  postcolonial lands, and the United States' imperial ambitions summon these cultures at particular moments of tension or crisis.

In addition to assorted articles and chapters,  Epic Events (Yale University Press, forthcoming) analyzes the chronopolitics of citizenship through instances of classicism and classical reception post 9/11. She is beginning to research a book on matter, affect, and the so-called ancient novels.

At Brown, Dr. Eccleston is also affiliated with the Cogut Center's Initiative for Environmental Humanities and the Department of Comparative Literature. She also directs the Critical Classical Studies Postdoctoral/Post-MFA Fellowship Program.

She is coediting a special issue of Transactions of the American Philological Association, Race and Racism: Beyond the Spectacular, with Patrice Rankine. Along with Mathias Hanses, Harriet Fertik, and Caroline Stark, she founded a scholarly society dedicated to Africana receptions of Ancient Greek and Roman culture, Eos, and served as its inaugural co-president from 2017-2020. She co-founded the international conference series Racing the Classics (I, 2018; II: University of Warwick, 2019; Recitative: 2019) with Dan-el Padilla. She has served on the Society for Classical Studies' Committee on Diversity in the Profession and on the steering committee for the first SCS faculty of color caucus, the Mountaintop Coalition

 

Dr. Eccleston is especially interested in directing research projects in Classics and allied fields that engage the intersection of race, ethnicity, and gender in Greco-Roman antiquity or in subsequent periods; new materialisms; poetry and poetics; & the ancient novel and Second Sophistic.

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas

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