Jazmin novoa lara

Graduate Student

jan2191@columbia.edu

606 Hamilton Hall

Spring 2025 Office hours: Wednesdays 2:30p-3:30p, Thursdays 3p-4p, and by appointment

Interests

• Greek drama

• Greek and Roman philosophy

• Greek and Roman religions

• Ancient medicine, especially Galen

• Representations of the body in classical art

• Classical receptions in Latin America

Jazmín earned her BA in Classical Philology (2017) and MA in Philosophy (2020) from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. Her master thesis focused on the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of Galen’s 'Quod animi mores'. She argued for an embodied and ensouled self as a conceptual possibility articulating different and conflicting psychological and physiological phenomena in the context of Galen’s work. Before coming to Columbia University, Jazmín completed an MA in Classical Studies (2022) at the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, with an interdisciplinary research project that studied how and why Greek and Roman arts represented the body and the soul. Jazmín has also presented and published on classical reception studies. She has explored how ancient myths, as reenacted in Latin American performances and contemporary works of art, address forms of political agency and facilitate collective memory.

Jazmín is fascinated by the old soul-body or mind-body problem that has interested philosophers and scientists for ages. She is convinced that perspectives from religion, art, and anthropology could offer valuable insights to better understand how Greeks and Romans related to that problem. Thus, her main interests lie in exploring how ancient authors and artists assembled individual and social identities by offering accounts of body and soul. At Columbia, her work focuses on constructing a social history of the soul in ancient Greece, exploring not only philosophical theories but also social beliefs as reflected in artistic practices, funerary traditions, hero cults, ideas about ghosts, the afterlife, necromancy, and magic.

Jazmín is an instructor of record for elementary Greek and has also served as TA for Intermediate Greek and Greek Myth. She is currently a Lead Teaching Fellow and the organizer of the Team Teaching Pedagogy Colloquium (2024–25). She is also the rapporteur of the University Seminar in Classical Civilization.

Selected Publications

• Novoa Lara, Jazmín. (2023). Identidad y otredad. Transformación y pervivencia del mito de Atalanta de la Antigüedad a la Modernidad. Nova tellus, 41(1), 173-198.