Writing
I am a published academic and short fiction writer. Below I list some of my published articles and short stories.
I'm currently polishing a memoir about growing up and living with inherited hearing loss, titled Accommodate This. And I've just finished a draft of a murder mystery set in ancient Athens, Marine.
I'd love to connect over editing or feedback opportunities for either academic writing or fiction, beta reading (especially if you are writing on the ancient world), or just to talk about writing. Visit the Services and Booking page to get in touch with me.
Academic Writing
Here is a sample of my academic articles. Most deal with my primary research interest, ancient Greek international relations. I have linked to the first pages on each on JSTOR or its publisher, but you will need an account (sometimes free!) to read further.
This was my first published article, and it originated in a senior independent study I did in my last year at Smith College.
I argue that the famous passage in the Odyssey in which Odysseus tells Nausicaa that the best marriage involves likemindedness, homophrosyne, between partners. But this is actually a very rare achievement indeed, limited mostly to Odysseus himself and his wife Penelope.
Treaties in ancient Greece and Rome would be inscribed on permanent materials like bronze or stone. What happened to those objects if the treaty was broken or its terms violated? Many such objects survive even though the agreements they preserve did not remain valid. What does this tell us about conceptions of peace and alliance in ancient Greece and Rome?
Ancient historians long believed that the Spartans required their allies to swear "to have the same friends and enemies and to follow the Lacedaemonians wherever they might lead" from the earliest days of Sparta as the dominant state in the Peloponnesus and ancient Greece. This would have given them significant control over their allies' policy, foreign and domestic. I demonstrate that assumption is untrue, and that the oath in fact dates to the period of Spartan imperialism after their defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War in 404/3 BCE.
Co-written with Georgina Muskett (Liverpool) and an invited chapter in Artists and Artistic Production in Ancient Greece, edited by Kristen Seaman and Peter Schultz.
This is the publication I'm contacted about the most. Addressing the question of why some painters and potters signed their products, it collects a database of all such signed ware, quintupling the number of previously known signed vases.
Creative Writing
Here is a selection of my published short stories. As you can see, dark humor is one of my trademarks, but the generic category of the short stories varies.
My first published short story. Technology and human nature combine to create evil.
The devil gets a job in human resources after buying the manager's soul when she was six.
The press is no longer active, so the story is now housed on this site. Click the link to read.
A story inspired by learning of a suicide forest in Japan, and envisioning how that might work out in the U.S.
A dinner party of such excess that there is no there there.
With apologies to the Roman author Petronius and his "Dinner at Trimalchio's."