Classical Studies Welcomes Latin Literature Expert to Department

Caldwell has an A.B. in Classics from Princeton University and received her M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Michigan. Her research interests are Roman social history, Latin literature, Roman law and ancient medicine.

Strong support for the faculty’s scholarly and pedagogical goals attracted Caldwell to Wesleyan.

“I am strongly committed to my research and to my teaching, and Wesleyan does a remarkable job of supporting faculty scholarship, while also focusing on undergraduate instruction,” Caldwell says. “Universities that successfully balance these two parts of academic life are rare, and for this reason I am thrilled to be at Wesleyan.”

Moreover, since the days when she wrote a senior undergraduate thesis on literacy in the Roman world, Caldwell has recognized the value of students’ receiving close guidance from faculty.

“Wesleyan is wonderful because its small size allows faculty to follow students through their time at the university, especially in their major,” she explains. “When I visited the campus and the Classical Studies Department, I was impressed by both the students – many of whom asked excellent questions about my research and teaching – and by the faculty, who are dedicated to advising students and helping them gain the most they can from their coursework. I wouldn’t be here today without the support of advisers and mentors, and I am happy to have the opportunity to give some of that back at Wesleyan.”

Caldwell comes to Wesleyan from the Department of Classics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where she was a visiting assistant professor. At Georgetown, she taught intermediate and advanced Latin, including the authors Cicero, Vergil, Tacitus and Apuleius. She also taught the History of the Roman Empire and courses on Roman Egypt, Roman law, ancient slavery and ancient medicine.

At Wesleyan, Caldwell will teach First-Year Latin and a course on Vergil’s Aeneid in the fall and focus on revising her book manuscript, Scripted Lives: Girls’ Coming of Age in the Early Roman Empire, for Cambridge University Press. Her other publications include “Roman Girls’ Transition to Marriage in Legal Thought,” in Finding Persephone: Women’s Rituals in the Ancient Mediterranean, forthcoming with Indiana University Press, 2007; and “Dido’s Deductio: Aeneid 4.127-168,” for Classical Philology.