Outreach & Engaged Scholarship
Podcast contributor - The Ancients: Divoced, Murdered Survived - Nero's Wives
· 2021
- 2021
Research
HistoryHit: The Ancients
In the long tradition of categorizing famous wives as the good or the bad, Nero’s partners are no exception. These women are regularly reduced to simple characters within the final Julio-Claudian Emperor’s orbit, but what of their own experiences and personalities? Lauren Ginsberg from Duke University speaks to Tristan in this episode to shine a light on the lives of Octavia, Poppaea and Statilia Messalina, and their fates at the hands of their husband.
Historical Contributor: Poppaea in History and on the Stage - Poppaea, an opera by Michael Hersch and Stephanie Fleischmann
· 2021
- 2021
Research
This opera takes us to one of the most notorious periods of imperial Roman history, the age of Nero. But while the writings that survive from ancient history often center the voices and worldview of men, Poppaea takes us into a world of women. In doing so, it stages two intertwined stories. The first is a story about Nero’s two wives, Octavia and Poppaea, as they wage a war fueled by women’s rage within the heart of the imperial palace. The second is a story about the rage of men against powerful women and the ways in which that rage vents itself – on their bodies, on their supporters, on their legacies. Never before had a Roman emperor’s divorce of an unloved wife threatened to undo his power; never after would a Roman emperor’s violent obsession with a new wife echo so clearly in eternity. This new work takes us back in time to these violent years but sheds the detached male eyes of ancient history in order to foreground the emotional interiority of the women who experienced these events, especially the woman for whom Nero would risk everything: Poppaea.
Service to the Profession
Participant
- Faculty Success Program
·
2021
Professional Development
National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD),