Associate Professor of History and Greek and Roman Studies, Illinois Wesleyan University
Ph.D. in Ancient History, University of Pennsylvania (2009)
M.A. in Ancient History, University of Pennsylvania (2004)
M.A. in Classics, University of Colorado at Boulder (2002)
B.A. in Classics and Mathematics, University of Colorado at Boulder (1999)
Amanda’s first book project, entitled “Gods, Landscape, and Community: A Network Approach to Mid-Republican Colonization,” examines the influences underlying the religious systems in the Roman and Latin colonies founded in the Italian peninsula between the years 338 and 177 BCE. She argues that the cults in each colony arose from a combination of the influence of individual colonial commissioners and the needs of the colonists to build a community with the local population. As a result, the religious systems were not images of Rome, rather derived from diverse local and Mediterranean religious networks to create a unique pantheon for each colony.
Amanda’s research interests include Roman religious, military, and colonial history, especially the melding of communities through organization of the sacred landscape. She also analyzes urban and extra-urban landscapes in Italy and Greece, including temple placement in relation to inhabited space, and burial and the claiming of land. Amanda currently is finishing an article on the hierarchy of expiating prodigies in Republican Italy. Future projects include an introductory textbook on ancient Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman colonization, an analysis of Vitruvius’ model (I.7) of temple placement, and an evaluation of the message of political and cultural dominance expressed by temples in the Rhodian peraia.