Below are profiles of students currently enrolled in the Ph.D. Program in Classics.
Click here for recent alumni
Roberto P. Bongiovanni is in his 4th year of doctoral studies. He took his BA at theUniversity of Toronto in Classics and Italian Studies and later took a degree in education. He has taught high school Latin for six years in both Toronto and New York. He currently teaches Latin and Italian in Great Neck, New York. His interests include Ancient Greek and Latin literature, private antiquities, and ancient medicine.
Email: rbongiovanni@gc.cuny.edu
Johanna Braff is a first year doctoral student. Before coming to the graduate center, she received her BA in Greek and Latin at Swarthmore College, a Post-Baccalaureate in Classics at the University of Pennsylvania and her MA in Classics at the University of Maryland. Johanna has taught extensively classes in Mythology and Greek literature in translation at the University of Maryland where she wrote an MA thesis on animal similes and their reflection of the role and status of women in both Homer's Odyssey and Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Her present interests are women in Greek literature, predominantly in Homer, tragedy and comedy. Currently, she is a teaching fellow at Brooklyn College and dwells in Manhattan.
Email: lilbraff@gmail.com
Michael Broder is a doctoral candidate who came to the Graduate Center with an MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from New York University. He holds an MA in Classics from the Graduate Center and a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Michael has taught at Brooklyn College, Hunter College, York College, and in the Language Reading Program at the Graduate Center. He is currently a 1st-year Writing Fellow at York College. Michael's dissertation in on Juvenal's Ninth Satire. He is interested in ideologies of sexuality and gender in the ancient world as well as in issues of poetic craft. He has presented papers at graduate student conferences at Brown, Princeton, and UCLA. During the 2006-2007 academic year, he was an at-large member of the Steering Committee of the Doctoral Students' Council and served on the Executive Committee of the PhD Program in Classics. He currently sits on the Committee on Structure of the Graduate Council.
Email: mbroder@gc.cuny.edu
Michael Goyette is a 3rd-year doctoral student who received his BA in Classical Studies: Greek from Vassar College. As an undergraduate, he spent time working on an excavation of Archaic-period ruins on the island of Despotiko with the Greek Archaeological Service. At the Graduate Center, his research interests currently include oral culture, epic poetry, literary tradition and development, Greek tragedy, and the construction of meaning in the poetry of Catullus. In addition, Michael teaches a core curriculum course in Greek and Roman literature at Brooklyn College. Pedagogy is an issue of utmost importance to him, and he frequently attends developmental seminars in order refine his own teaching abilities and find new methods to inform and engage diverse groups of students. Michael has also taught Latin at the City College of New York and English literature courses at Kingsborough Community College.
Email: migoyette@gmail.com
Timothy Hanford is a fourth-year doctoral student. He received an MAT in Latin at Hunter College and a BA in Classics at NYU. He currently teaches Latin at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. His interests include epic poetry and Rome in the Silver Age.
Email: misterhanford@yahoo.com
Benjamin Joffe is enrolled in the master's program after a year and a half of post-baccalaureate studies at Columbia University. He earned a B.A. in History from Yeshiva University, where he joined Eta Sigma Phi, the national Classics honorary society, and was eventually elected their national president in his senior year. In order to gain entrance, Benjamin translated The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band into Latin, gaining international media attention. He has taught Latin at The Marymount School and through The Middlebridge Exchange in Manhattan. His scholarly interests include early Roman history and Late Antiquity.
Email: benjijoffe@yahoo.com
Cameron Pearson is a 4th year Ph.D. student. After receiving a B.A. in literature from the New School University, he studied linguistics and comparative literature at l'Université de Paris Diderot. His interests include the development of poetic genres in 6th and 5th century Greece, Hellenistic pedagogy, Roman satire, and the construction of identity in the classical world.
Email: camerongpearson@yahoo.com
Jared Simard is in his third year of doctoral study. He received his BA in Classics and History from the University of Pittsburgh. He holds a Graduate Teaching Fellowship at Hunter College, where he teaches Classical Mythology and The Greek and Latin Roots of English (2007-present). He has served on the Executive Committee of the PhD Program in Classics and is the current Doctoral Students’ Council program representative for Classics. His scholarly interests include Latin poetry, reception studies, particularly during the medieval and Renaissance periods, historical linguistics, and instructional technology and pedagogy as it relates to Classics.
Email: jsimard@gc.cuny.edu
Alan Sumler is a 4th-year doctoral student. He came to the Graduate Center holding a BA in sociology and philosophy from the University of North Texas and a Master of Humanities in Classics from the University of Dallas. Alan currently teaches mythology at the City College of New York, Queens College (College Now), and Montclair State University. He has also taught Greek and Latin Roots of English at Hunter College. In May 2007 he presented a paper on sexual puns in the Mimes of Herodas at a Princeton University Graduate Student Symposium. His interests include Ancient Greek and Latin poetry, poetic technique, mythology in poetry, and the everyday world of the ancients.
Email: asumler@gc.cuny.edu
Alissa Vaillancourt is a 4th year Ph.D. student who received a B.A. from College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA). As an undergraduate, she attended the College Year in Athens study abroad program in Athens, Greece. After graduating from Holy Cross, she taught English as a second language in Rome, Italy for one year, and, as the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, she returned to Rome in 2005 in order to attend the American Academy in Rome Summer Classical Program. Currently, she is a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Brooklyn College. Her scholarly interests include ancient Greeks in the Roman world, Hellenistic poetry, and social history.
Email: availlancourt@gc.cuny.edu
Maura Williams is in her 5th year of doctoral studies. She came to CUNY after a summer at the American Academy in Rome's Classical Summer School with a BA in French and Classics from the University of Vermont and an MA in Classics from the Univerisity of Oregon. Certified to teach French and Latin in New York and Connecticut, she has taught for 7 years in public schools and is now teaching Latin at The Foote School, a private middle school in New Haven, CT. She has also taught Classical Mythology at Queens College. Scholarly interests include Hellenistic and Roman Epigram and Elegy, Roman humor, and intertextuality.
Email: MauraKW52@aol.com
Liz Zogby is a second year doctoral student. She received her BA in Classical Civilizations and Music at Loyola Marymount University. She currently teaches Classical Cultures at Brooklyn College. Her scholarly interests include Hellenistic literature, epic poetry, and modern methods of teaching classical languages.
Email: ezogby@yahoo.com
Profiles for the following students are pending.
RECENT ALUMNI

Georgia Tsouvala completed her dissertation, “The social and historical context of Plutarch’s Erotikos,” under the supervision of Professor Ronnie Ancona, and currently Georgia holds a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of History at Illinois State University. Previously, she has taught classics courses at Hunter College (2001-2003) and history courses as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Western Illinois University (2005-2007). In addition, Georgia has co-directed study abroad trips to Greece (2005) and Rome (2007). In the past, she has worked as a research and editorial assistant for a number of publications and for the Database of Classical Bibliography. Georgia’s research interests include Greek and Latin language and literature with a special focus on Plutarch, Greek and Roman history (especially the social history of Greece during the early Empire), epigraphy, prosopography, and gender. She has presented a number of papers both nationally and internationally on Plutarch and his milieu, and has completed a forthcoming article entitled “Integrating marriage and homonoia,” for the Proceedings of the 7th International Plutarch Society Congress at Rethymno. Her future publication agenda includes a commentary on Plutarch’s Erotikos, as well as work on Thespian inscriptions. Georgia has been the recipient of the Doreen C. Spitzer Advanced Fellowship and of the Broneer Travel Award from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens where she was an associate member and fellow (2003-2005). She has also received the generous support of the Mario Capelloni Dissertation Year Fellowship from the Graduate Center. Georgia has participated in summer programs in both Greece and Italy for which she received the Mary A. Sollman Scholarship for Study Abroad at the American Academy in Rome Summer Program from the New York Classical Club (2000), and the Kenneth Mass Fund Scholarship for summer study at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from the Classics Department at Hunter College (1999). Finally, she has been one of the two national Graduate Student Liaisons for the Women’s Classical Caucus, and most recently Georgia was nominated by Illinois State University as the institution’s representative to the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Email: gtsouva@ilstu.edu
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