Ben Davis

A native of the Salt Lake City area, I graduated with a B.A. in Linguistics and Classics (summa cum laude) from the University of Utah in 2016 and received my M.A. in Classics from the University of Oregon in 2018.

Broadly speaking, I am interested in the Latin literature of the imperial period, with a particular emphasis on Neronian and Flavian authors. My dissertation project, supported by UCLA’s Dissertation Year Award, studies the changing ideological potential of the pastoral mode in the Roman literature of the first few centuries CE, moving beyond Vergil’s Eclogues to texts including Calpurnius Siculus’ Eclogues, Columella’s De Re Rustica, and Statius’ Silvae. Utilizing methodologies informed by ecocriticism, landscape theory, and environmental history, I argue that Roman writers in this period developed new versions of pastoral literature in conversation with landscape painting and villa design that highlight the role of imperial processes (and imperial violence) in producing and maintaining the bucolic ideal.

Beyond the scope of my dissertation, I am interested generally in the Romans’ relationship with non-humans and in the intersections of social class, gender, sexuality, and geography in imperial Roman society. Another strand of my interests focuses on the relationship between ecological and interpersonal violence in imperial Latin epic – particularly Lucan’s Bellum Civile – and I have recently become interested in the reception of this poem in the literature of early modern Britain. Other fields of interest include Latin pastoral and the reception of Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics in Late Antiquity, theories of ekphrasis, and Roman declamation.

At UCLA I have taught courses including Classics 10 (Discovering the Greeks), Classics 30 (Classical Mythology), and Classics 495 (Teaching Apprentice Practicum), and served as a TA for a wide variety of civilization and introductory Latin courses.