Monthly Archives: February 2019

Professor Emily Allen-Hornblower, Rutgers Department of Classics

The Whiting Foundation has awarded Emily Allen-Hornblower, associate professor of Classics at Rutgers-New Brunswick, one of its five Public Engagement Seed Grants for 2019-20 for a series of communal conversations, “The Public Face of Emotions: Public Engagement and the Emotions in Our Lives”.

The project aims to engage the public in discussions of ancient Greek tragedy and epic with formerly incarcerated men and women—mainly Allen-Hornblower’s former students from her teaching in NJ prisons—as an opportunity for the building of civic bridges.

The Whiting Public Engagement Seed Grants are part of the foundation’s larger Public Engagement Programs, initiated in 2016 “to celebrate and empower humanities faculty who embrace public engagement as part of the scholarly vocation”.

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RU Classics PhD candidate Nicole Nowbahar in front of the Constitution of the Roman Republic of 1849 [inscribed 2011], overlooking the city from the Passeggiata del Gianicolo.

The American Academy in Rome Affiliated Fellowship has been such an amazing experience and crucial to my dissertation work. My dissertation is focused on both the ideal and transgressive clothing of Roman women. I look specifically at literary examples of cross-dressing women, who wear armor or men’s clothing for different purposes. Before discussing these instances of women wearing transgressive clothing, my first three chapters examine the ideal dress of women in literature and material culture.

During this fellowship, my mission has been to look at as many as I can of ancient sculptures, frescoes, and other ancient works depicting the clothed female body. By understanding how Romans visually depicted the ideal clothed woman, I will be able to understand the nuances and significance of dress that does not fit this ideal standard.

Statue of Aphrodite in Rome’s Centrale Montemartini Museum.

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