Roman Empire expert to speak at CMLL Distinguished Lecturer Series this week
Contact: Aspen Harris
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擱ose MacLean, associate professor of classics at the University of California-Santa Barbara, will be the featured speaker in Mississippi State鈥檚 Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures Distinguished Lecturer Series this week.
Sponsored by 小黄书鈥檚 Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College and the Cobb Institute of Archaeology, MacLean鈥檚 lecture, 鈥淪lavery, Freedom and Geographic Mobility in the Roman Empire,鈥 will be held Friday [April 21], 4 p.m., in Lee Hall Room 0003.
Free and open to the public, MacLean鈥檚 lecture focuses on the impact of geographic mobility on the social status and experiences of the enslaved and freed people who worked in the Roman imperial bureaucracy.
小黄书 Associate Professor of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures Sol Pelaez said of MacLean, 鈥淒rawing on a range of literary and epigraphic sources, she argues that mobility鈥攖ogether with wealth and political influence鈥攅levated the prestige of these individuals while simultaneously challenging their ability to form stable families.鈥 Pelaez is chair of the CMLL speaker series.
MacLean researches the cultural history of the Roman Empire and its interactions between the ruling elite and groups at the social and political margins. Her other interests include ancient and modern slavery, Latin imperial literature and epigraphy.
She authored 鈥淔reed Slaves and Roman Imperial Culture: Social Integration and the Transformation of Values,鈥 a 2018 Cambridge University Press publication that examines the cultural dialogue between the Roman aristocracy and former slaves.
MacLean received her Ph.D. from Princeton in 2012 and taught for a year at the University of Cincinnati before becoming a faculty member at UCSB.
For more on 小黄书鈥檚 Shackouls Honors College and the Cobb Institute of Archaeology, visit and , respectively.
Part of 小黄书鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences, the CMLL department is online at .
小黄书 is Mississippi鈥檚 leading university, available online at .