Elizabeth Heintges

Graduate Student

emh2130@columbia.edu

Interests

• Latin and Hellenistic Greek literature

• Cultural geography and history of Hellenistic and Roman Sicily

• Late Antique poetry

• Numismatics and epigraphy

A life-long New Yorker, Elizabeth received her B.A. in Classics from Reed College, where she wrote her undergraduate thesis on genre and intertextuality in the Cyrenean ktisis narratives of Callimachus and Pindar. She joined the Ph.D. program after receiving a M.A. in Classics from Columbia (2015).

Elizabeth’s research, broadly conceived, examines constructions of space, cultural geography, landscape, and memory in Latin and Greek literature (with an eye to comparanda in the historical and archaeological record). Her dissertation, "Between myth and memory: Sicily in Roman literature (1st c. BCE – 1st c. CE)," examines the literary representation of the island of Sicily, Rome's first province, within this larger framework. She is spending the current academic year (2019-2020) conducting dissertation research in Italy and New York. To better contextualize her literary investigations, Elizabeth has also excavated in Sicily as a member of the field team of the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (AEM:CAP).

Beyond Sicily, Elizabeth has keen interests in the Latin poetry of Late Antiquity and in numismatics, epigraphy, and the history of collections. She is in the process of studying and cataloguing the Roman Republican coins in Columbia's Olcott Collection alongside several colleagues in the Classical Studies graduate program; she has also been working for several years with Dr. Joe Sheppard (Columbia '19) on the unpublished Latin and Greek inscriptions in the Olcott Collection. In Summer 2019, Elizabeth received the Graduate Student Internship in Primary Sources at Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library; during the period of the internship, Elizabeth worked extensively on the Columbia papyrus collection and its associated archival materials. She is currently drafting an article—which grew out of her archival research and training from the internship—on the history and development of Columbia's papyrus collection in the early 20th century.

At Columbia, Elizabeth has taught Intensive Elementary Latin, Intermediate Latin I (Cicero and Catullus), and Elementary Greek I-II; she also served as a teaching assistant for Intermediate Greek (Homer) and Egypt in the Classical World. Though not currently in the classroom, Elizabeth currently co-facilitates the Classics/Classical Studies Team-Teaching Pedagogy Colloquium and is a Classics Lead Teaching Fellow with the Center for Teaching and Learning. Other past Columbia endeavors include coordinating the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, co-organizing the Classics Colloquium series, acting in Barnard/Columbia Ancient Drama productions, and excavating with Columbia's team at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli.

To balance her academic work, Elizabeth enjoys a healthy crossword puzzle obsession, evenings at the opera, and (ancient and modern) culinary experiments.