Guests

Jana Matuszak specializes in the Sumerian language and its literature. Firmly grounded in cuneiform philology, her work on gender, law, religion, and poetics uses innovative theorizations of ancient texts to engage broader Humanistic discourses. She is the author of several articles on humor and sub...

Dr Ben Angell is the Narrative Lead at CaptureAge, working on the Chronicles series for Age of Empires, as well as other projects within the Age franchise and beyond. Previously, he was a writer on the Anno franchise at Ubisoft. Prior to that, he gained a DPhil in Ancient History from the University...

Born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece, Constantine’s interest in Greco-Roman antiquity can be traced back to his Elementary School years, where he remembered his curiosity burning the brightest during school trips to archaeological sites and museums. Enhanced by a love for literature and history, ...

Panelists:

Dr. Melissa Funke (Prof of Classics, University of Winnipeg)
https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/classics/faculty/melissa-funke.html

Dr. Deb Trusty (Prof of Classics, University of Iowa)
https://interdisciplinaryprograms.uiowa.edu/people/debra-trusty

Dr. Justin Arft (Prof of Classics, University...

Ben Truska is a graduate of the University of Missouri with bachelor's degrees in Classics-Humanities and History. He is also a graduate of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Athens, Greece earning a Master’s of Greek and Near Eastern Archaeology from the Bronze Age Palaces to the...

Panelists:

Dr. Joel Christensen (Prof of Classics, CUNY - Graduate Center)
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/people/joel-p-christensen

Dr. Curtis Dozier (Prof of Greek and Roman Studies, Vassar College)
https://www.vassar.edu/faculty/cudozier

Dr. Suzanne Lye (Prof of Classics, University of North Carolin...

Catherine E. Bonesho is an Assistant Professor of Early Judaism in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. Her research focuses on the history, languages, literature, and culture of Judaism in the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods with the goal of locating these texts in thei...

David Schenker has been at the University of Missouri since 1991, teaching just about every Greek course on the books, and a few of the Latin ones. He previously served as department chair for 9 years and he is currently the director of undergraduate studies. His research interests have shifted rece...

Salima Ikram is Distinguished University Professor and holder of the Amelia Peabody Chair in Egyptology at the American University in Cairo and has excavated in Egypt for more than 30 years as well as working in the Sudan, Turkey, and Greece. Her specialties include animals in ancient Egypt, mummifi...

Jenn Finn (M.A. Columbia University, M.A. University of Michigan, PhD University of Michigan, PhD Ludwig Maximilians-Universität) is Associate Professor and Chair of the Classical Studies Department at Loyola University Chicago. She works on ancient warfare, Alexander the Great, cross-cultural conta...

Petra M. Creamer is an archaeologist of the ancient Near Eastern world who researches the impact of empires on their subjects. She is an assistant professor in the Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies department at Emory University, and she obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania's ...

Jeffrey received his Ph.D. in Egyptology from UCLA in 2025. His research focuses on ritual and religion in Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt, particularly regarding how elites utilized ritual and performance to communicate ideologies of power and how complex administrative institutions developed ...