Classical Studies Welcomes Three New Members
Classical Studies is pleased to announce the addition of three new visiting faculty members who will be teaching in our Department starting this Fall.
Professor McCall teaches biblical Hebrew. She received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Princeton Theological Seminary (2012). Her research interests include the grotesque in Ezekiel, divine and human bodies as sources of theological meaning in the Bible, theology of the Priestly literature, and biblical ethics.
Professor McConnell works on the social and economic history of the ancient world with a focus on Greco-Roman Egypt and the late antique East. His latest research looks at how the Apions, owners of an estate in late antique Egypt, rose from local prominence in the relative backwater of Oxyrhynchus to the highest levels of political influence and wealth in Constantinople. The approach relies on a quantitative analysis of the many papyri from the estate, and draws comparisons to methods of moneymaking found in literary and documentary sources from 5th and 4th century Athens, Ptolemaic Egypt, Rome, and places beyond the classical world. His PhD is in Classical Philology from the University of Illinois and he defended in 2013.
Professor Nichols' research focuses on the legal and social history of classical Athens. In particular, he is interested in the intersections of cultural ideology and public discourse, and thus he examines Attic Oratory and Drama as sophisticated reflections of, and reflections upon, Athenian society. His dissertation, The Rhetoric of Vengeance (timōria) in Athenian Forensic Oratory, is a comprehensive study of the Greek value term timōria invoked by litigants in the law courts of classical Athens (508-322 BCE), and it argues
that litigants present timōria self-consciously to navigate social tensions surrounding the pursuit of
personal vengeance. Future projects include a book-length study of the practice and rhetoric of vengeance in classical Athens. Professor Nichols received his PhD in Classical Studies in 2013 from Indiana University, Bloomington and has twice been a Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
