Marissa Swan (she/her)

Graduate Student

mkh2161@columbia.edu
618 Hamilton Hall

Spring 2025 Office hours: TBA

Interests

• History of medicine

• Late antiquity

• The body

• The intersection of philosophy, religion, and medicine

• Literary theory

• Lactantius

Marissa is a first-generation student from the rural, Midwestern town of Twelve Mile, Indiana. She received her BA in Classics from Purdue University (2017) and her MA in Greek and Latin from University of Maryland - College Park (2019).

She came to Columbia with the intention of writing a dissertation on the body in Greek tragedy, but has since found herself in the world of Late Antiquity. Her dissertation project now aims to nuance our understanding of how the early-Christian writer Lactantius understood the body, the self, and their relationship with both one another and the natural world.

Since 2020 Marissa has been involved with the Center for Teaching and Learning, serving as a Lead Teaching Fellow (LTF), Teaching Assessment Fellow (TAF), and a Teaching Consultant (TC). For the 2024-2025 AY, she is serving as a Senior Lead Teaching Fellow (SLTF) while continuing her work as a TC.

Marissa has a taught Latin at all levels, intensive Greek, and classical mythology in translation both at Columbia and at UMD.