Clara Bosak-Schroeder, Assistant Professor of Classics, has been appointed a CAS (Center for Advanced Study) Beckman Fellow for the 2021-2022 academic year.

CAS Beckman Fellows are untenured U of I faculty members whose proposals are selected in an annual competition. These appointments grant one semester of teaching release time to pursue an individual scholarly or creative project. With the Professors and Associates, they form the core of the Center for Advanced Study community. Fellows also participate in a yearly roundtable discussion of research interests and are invited to offer a future CAS presentation.

Professor Bosak-Schroeder’s project is titled “Seven Wonders: Remaking the Past.” The project counters white supremacist appropriations of Greece and Rome and imagines a new future for classical studies. Through the framework of reception studies, this book project examines how artists of color reinterpret the seven great monuments of the ancient Mediterranean. Their reinterpretations critique the modern construction of the ancient world as white and masculine, while simultaneously recuperating Greek and Roman identification with a multi-ethnic Mediterranean.

Professor Bosak-Schroeder’s research areas include classical reception studies, museum studies, classics and the environmental humanities, Greek and Roman historiography and technical literature, feminist science studies and new materialisms.