My current research explores concepts of pseudonymous authorship, from forgeries in art and literature to social media impostures and online avatars.

My dissertation, Writing to Power: Tyrant and Sage in Greek Epistolography (Sheila Murnaghan, director), stems from my interest in how archaic and classical wisdom figures, such as Stesichorus, Euripides, Hippocrates, and Plato, are received and refigured in fictional epistolography, a field that exploded in popularity in the Hellenistic and imperial eras. My research investigates the significant role that tyrants play in the genre, as correspondents with (or as persons of interest to) the “stars” of Greek paideia. Most scholars have acknowledged the presence of tyrants in Greek epistolography only vaguely, listing them among the traditional features of the genre, or as a “commonplace” unworthy of much attention. I contend instead that the historical tyrant, reanimated as a correspondent with a famous figure of Greek wisdom, becomes an important lens through which authors of the imperial era can examine the place of Greek literary wisdom in the Roman Empire, and even the very concept of authorship.

My other academic interests lie in reception studies, Senecan tragedy, and epic.