CURRENT MISSION

write the dissertation and enjoy life in the process

ABOUT ME

I am easy going and love traveling and meeting new people. I grew up in Alameda, CA (in the SF Bay Area), where I spent an obscene amount of time following the Oakland Athletics. I then went NYU and worked at a couple record labels (Matador and Kindercore) before hopping uptown to Columbia and studying Greek and Latin. I now live in Ann Arbor, MI, where I've just finished my third-year in the Greek and Roman History Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan.

PHILOSOPHY

Live and let live.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

have surfed in Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City, and Saint John, NB.

Interests

baseball, indie music, history, good beer

• writing
• documentaries
• beer
• clothing
• traveling
• music
• baseball
• history
• law

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: Neutral Milk Hotel, of Montreal, Olivia Tremor Control, Dungen, Spoon, Guided By Voices, Devendra Banhart, Iron & Wine, Beirut, Neko Case, New Pornographers, Arcade Fire, The Decembrists

TV: Arrested Development, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Peep Show

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I spent two seasons excavating a Roman town in Egypt's Dakhleh Oasis. My first season we found the remains of a school from the 4th-century AD with a poem written in Greek on a wall exhorting the students to "reach the summit of knowledge". I remember watching in awe as each line emerged from the sand -- until my supervisor told me to get back in my trench!

Teach, Learn, Share

I do papyrology, which is the study of papyri, ostraka (potsherds with writing on them), wooden tablets, etc., which mainly have been preserved from the dry climate of Egypt. Specifically, I do Greek documentary papyrology, focusing on the objects of everyday writing from Greco-Roman Egypt (332 BCE - 642 CE). These include personal letters, petitions, contracts, tax receipts (woot!), copies of decrees, and so on. Hundreds of thousands of these have been preserved and discovered in Egypt, most of which still haven't been published -- and more are being discovered each year. So there's a lot of work to do, from deciphering to interpreting the texts and placing them in their historical context.

One of the cool things about studying these texts is how close you can get to the lives of ancient people -- and oftentimes you get the sense that not much has changed in the past 2,000 years. I just recently published my first text, which was a petition from a woman named Senyris to the chief justice of the Ptolemaic (the Macedonian rulers after Alexander) legal system. She charges her husband with kicking her and their two children out of the house, not feeding or clothing the family (as per their marriage contract), and then says "what's more" -- and here she uses a colloquial phrase not usually found in official documents like this, I think indicating her complete exasperation with this man -- and what's more, the man has taken on another woman as his wife. Unfortunately the scoundrel's name is lost in a missing portion of the papyrus!

So that's what I do. Ask me about it and I'll go on forever -- be forewarned! :)

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Belgium, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Russian Federation, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, United Kingdom, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Egypt, Germany, United States

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