Melody wauke

Graduate Student

maw2277@columbia.edu

606 Hamilton Hall

Interests

• Kinship

• Race and ethnicity

• Imperial Greek literature

• Manuscript studies

Melody is a PhD candidate in the Classics department. She received her BA in Classics from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. After graduation, she lived in Greece for one year while she taught English to junior high and high school students as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. While in Greece, she also developed an interest in the language and literature of modern Greece and its connection to its ancient past. After returning to the US, she completed her MA in Classics at Notre Dame, where she wrote a thesis on the sibling relationship in Sophocles’ Antigone.

Melody is interested in family and household relations in the Greco-Roman world. Her dissertation, which focuses on “fictive kinships” in the Roman empire, explores relationships between adults and children who were not related by blood or marriage, but who interacted in ways that resembled the relationship between parents and their offspring. In particular, she examines the relationships between foster parents and foster children, teachers and students, masters and apprentices, and wet nurses and nurslings. This project, which relies on both literary and documentary sources, investigates how these kin-like bonds could be formed and celebrated, or hidden and discouraged, depending on the status, gender, and ethnic origins of those participating in the relationships.

Outside of Classics, Melody enjoys cooking, exploring New York City, and looking at trees.