Alumni News

Chris Forstall, PhD '14
Chris has just published his first, co-authored book, Quantitative Intertextuality: Analyzing the Markers of Information Reuse.

Jeff Froustet, BA '11
Jeff is currently the Publications Data Coordinator for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) out of Reston, VA.

Russell Pascatore, MA '11
Russell has gone on to earn a highly competitive College Doctoral Fellowship in the PhD program in classics at USC. He says, “At the University of Southern California, I look forward to focusing on the relations between the literary, philosophical, and political culture of the Roman empire . . . I am very thankful to you for the education I pursued with our department [UB Classics], in all its pedagogical aspects.”

Theo Kopestonksy, PhD '09
Dr. Theodora Kopestonsky, who took her PhD in Classics here at UB in 2009, was a recipient of the 2020 Society for Classical Studies Collegiate Teaching Award
(https://classicalstudies.org/awards-and-fellowships/scs-newsletter-january-2021-collegiate-teaching-award).  Theo holds the position of Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the Beginning/Intermediate Latin Program and Placement in the Department of Classics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. (January 2021)

Jenny Muslin, MA '09
Jenny is currently a PhD student in Art and Art History at the University of Texas in Austin, where she is working with Professors Penelope Davies and John Clarke.  She delivered a paper at the 113th meeting of the AIA in Philadelphia: Heu me miserum! The Rhetoric of Misericordia in Roman Depictions of the Fall of Troy.

Jason Banta, PhD '06
Jason reports in from Texas: “I am an Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University, and this year became the associate editor of Intertexts. On the more personal side, I got married this summer. ” Congratulations, Jason!

Myles McCallum, PhD '06
Myles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Classics at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He specializes in Roman archaeology and history, and he teaches courses at Saint Mary’s on these subjects, as well as Classical mythology, and literature. His current research is split between Roman southern Italy and Pompeii. As the director of the Basentello Valley Research Project, he is concerned with understanding the role played by imperial properties in the cultural development of Apulia and Lucania during the early Roman period, and the nature of imperial landholdings generally in these two regions. Since 2005, Myles has organized and run an archaeological field study course in Italy at the site of San Felice, a Roman imperial estate in Puglia, with his colleague, Dr. Hans vanderLeest of Mount Allison University.

Melissa Rothfus, PhD '06
Melissa is an Assistant Professor of History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her work centers on the social and cultural history of the Greeks and Romans, ranging from the conflicts and power struggles within the early Christian community in Corinth to the use of symbols to negotiate status within Roman society. Her article, The Gens Togata: Changing Styles and Changing Identities, appeared recently in the American Journal of Philology. She is currently at work on a monograph that examines the development of specific elements of attire by sub-groups within Roman society who seek to articulate and manipulate their identities and access to power.

M. Barbara Reeves, PhD '05
Barbara, who is Assistant Professor of Classics at Queen’s University, directs the Humayma Excavation Project in the beautiful Hisma desert of Southern Jordan. View a picture of the 2010 excavation team.

Paul Kimball, PhD '04
Paul teaches in the Program in Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, including an honors seminar on “Madness and Civilization” last fall. He's been a contributor to the International Medieval Bibliography (Leeds, UK) for a few years now. He'll be on the APA Committee on Classical Tradition and Reception until 2013 when he will organize the cmte’s panel at the annual meeting Arabic and Islamic Receptions of Classical Literature, and begin a 5-year term as head of the Society for Late Antiquity at the APA. Paul also organized the SLA panel back in 2009 in Philly, with 3 of the 5 papers published, together with an introduction by me, in the Journal of Late Antiquity w/ an intro by him. And in June of 2008 he was a visiting researcher, La Fondation Hardt (Geneva, Switzerland), on the topic of “Le renversement rituel du rang et l’apparat du pouvoir impérial pendant l’Antiquité tardive.”

Lucas Rubin, PhD '04
Lucas was appointed director of the City University of New York’s renowned Latin Greek Institute in the fall of 2020, a position he holds concurrent with his role as Brooklyn College’s Assistant Dean for Academic Programs and member of  the College’s Department of Classics. His scholarship is quite eclectic, and includes forays into Brooklyn history, classics and classical archaeology, as well as aspects of higher education policy and practice. Prior to joining Brooklyn College in 2014, he worked at Columbia University in a range of capacities, from coordinator of archaeology programs to director of professionally focused graduate degrees. 

Allison Glazebrook, PhD '01
Allison is a former chair and currently professor of Classics at Brock University! Check out her recent publication, Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE-200CE , co-edited with Madeleine M. Henry (University of Wisconsin Press).

Francesa D'Allesandro Behr, PhD '00
It is no surprise to anyone who knows her that Francesca won the Ross M. Lence Humanities Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Houston, where she is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and Italian Studies. Here is a link to the enthusiastic BMCR review of her book, Feeling History: Lucan, Stoicism, and the Poetics of Passion (Ohio State University Press).

Francesca D’Alessandro Behr, Associate Professor of Classics and Italian Studies and UB Classics PhD, has received the 2012-13 University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award for the category Provost Core. This award is given to faculty in recognition of outstanding teaching in the Core Curriculum. Recipients are honored with a trophy and an $8000.00 prize. The Core courses she typically teaches are Women in the Ancient World and Latin Classics in Translation. The Awards were presented on Wednesday April 24, 2013. Francesca was last year’s Alumni Speaker, and her lecture on Renaissance Latin women writers amply demonstrated the passion, charm, and erudition she brings to her teaching. Congratulations, Francesca!

Thomas Roche, PhD '00
homas began in the PhD program, ancient history track, in fall 1993, having earned an MA in classics from the U. of VT in 1991, and then spent the next two years teaching public high school Latin. Eventually, upon recommendation of a woman in the UB career counseling office, he decided to enroll at the UB Dept. of Information Science M.L.S. program, upon completion of his PhD. He defended his dissertation in Dec. 1999 (advisor was Prof. Steve Dyson), and began the MLS program that January, completing it in a calendar year.  He then began a search for work which culminated in his appointment as a prep school librarian/ teacher in rural CT.  He has taught at several schools since then, and has been serving here at AICA since 2008. Please feel free to ask him any additional questions – Thomas says he is eager to reestablish fruitful contact with fellow UB Classics alums and to offer any assistance he can to current UB students.