Meet our Seniors

Russell Raymond Ausrota

 When I was six years old, I saw my older brother in a school production of Jason and the Argonauts, and I never recovered. My primary interest is what we can learn about individuals and cultures through their representations of their real or imagined past, particularly through the lens of epic. That analysis is as productively applied to texts in their contemporary world as to their reception, and, because I am also majoring in philosophy, I am immensely curious about questions like what Hegel’s reconstruction of Roman history can teach us about his thought.

Lyla Guthrie

As early as my freshman year of high school, I figured I would end up majoring in classics. In fourth grade, I was gifted Minimus: Starting Out in Latin, and in seventh grade, I began formally studying the language. I continued learning Latin throughout high school and began taking electives on the ancient world. I fell in love with the poets of the late Republic and early Empire. I was captivated by this recurring theme of control and what it meant within the context of the turbulent period they wrote in. My college application process was thus a decision about where I would major in classics, and given that I had developed an interest in philology and theory, the faculty members and courses offered at Barnard and Columbia greatly appealed to me.

What I did not expect was how far I would be able to branch out in classics. While I have largely focused on the literature and arts of Italy (before, during, and after Rome), I have also had the privilege of taking a number of courses on ancient Egypt. This fall, I am interning in the Egyptian Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In September, I presented research on post-pharaonic Egypt at a conference hosted by the University of Leiden. Classics has also allowed me to embrace my dramatic side: I played Electra in Barnard Columbia Ancient Drama Group’s production of Euripides’ Orestes, performed entirely in Ancient Greek. 

Majoring in classics has taught me how to construct fierce, nuanced, and cogent arguments, to reckon with the inherent compromises of translation, and most importantly, to learn from my brilliant peers. I am forever indebted to the departments at Barnard and Columbia for their support, and I feel so grateful for the education I have received.

Eseroma Jone Batiuluna Matebalavu

I am a Classics major reading both Greek and Latin, completing the Dual BA with Trinity College Dublin, where I am writing my capstone this year. What draws me to the ancient world is the way the past gets made: how societies reach back to explain their political order, to claim legitimacy, and to invent themselves, not least as "the West." The same instinct runs through my love of the languages themselves. I relish their precision, and the way words can be shaped, bent, and repurposed to serve an argument.

Herodotus has been my constant companion in those questions, above all in Shane Wallace's Greek class at Trinity. At Columbia, Liz Irwin's class on the Odyssey taught me to read against the grain, finding the subtext beneath the epic's surface and the quieter critiques of Odysseus himself. In Latin, my passion is Cicero, whose De Re Publica and Pro Caelio show the same mind at work in political theory and in the courtroom, turning language into an instrument of power.

Amelia Reichert

I began learning Latin at age 7 in school, and my study of Classics has continued ever since. It has come with me from the UK to Ireland and now to the US as part of my education. Everything within the spectrum of this area of study has been an engaging experience, but my particular interests have always been the Latin and Classical Greek languages, as well as the ancient epic literature such as the 'Aeneid', 'Metamorphoses' and the 'Iliad'. Being a part of the Dual BA with Trinity College Dublin and undergoing an undergraduate education at two universities has been an amazing opportunity and has given me an incredible learning experience across what will soon be four years. Classics is deeply important to me, and I want to take it with me into my working life and beyond after my graduation.