Professor and Head Academic History Yale University: Ph.D. 1995, M.Phil 1993, M.A. 1992.University of Ottawa: M.A. 1990.Carleton University: B.A. Hon 1989. Research Interests My research focus is on death, theatricality, and the reception of Classical Antiquity. My historical walking guides: Strolling Through Rome: The Definitive Walking Guide to the Eternal City (2015) and Strolling Through Florence: The Definitive Walking Guide to the Renaissance City (2018) take visitors step-by-step through the eras and areas of the cities to experience first-hand the sites and art that have played an enormous role in shaping Western Culture. As director of the UGA Europe program, I lead tours throughout Europe. The Spectacular Dead: Staging Death in Classical Antiquity (Bloomsbury, 2026) explores the staging and viewing of Roman corpses from antiquity to contemporary funerary practices and museum displays, asking the question, "Is a corpse art?" The edited volume, A Cultural History of Death: Antiquity, a multi-volume series (Bloomsbury, 2024), assembles leading scholars who examine themes of dying, disposal, and commemoration in multiple volumes from Antiquity to the Present. In Death: Antiquity And Its Legacy I.B.Tauris/ Oxford University Press Ancients and Moderns series (2012), I explore how ancient death rituals inform and engage modern funerary and burial practices. The book expands upon my Reading Death in Ancient Rome (Columbus, 2008) in which I examine death ritual as a cultural and literary intertext of epitaphs, drama, and epic to analyze authorial agendas that are often at odds with actual rituals. The potential for theatre space to elicit scripted and unscripted actor and audience responses is explored in Roman Tragedy: Theatre to Theatricality (Austin, 2004) that was the first monograph devoted to Roman tragedy in over 125 years. I focus on the reciprocity between the theatre, actual and figurative, and the audience. I take a semiotic approach to explore theatre (textual and architectural) and metatheatre in the Late Republic and Early Empire. Archaic Latin Verse (Focus Publishing, 2nd edition: 2004) is a text and commentary edition of Latin verse from carmina to the historical epics of Livius, Naevius and Ennius, including selections from the earliest Roman tragedies and comedies, and fragments from the satires of Lucilius. Research Research Interests: Death, Theatricality, and the Reception of Classical Antiquity.
