Chiara Sulprizio

Senior Lecturer of Classical and Mediterranean Studies

Chiara Sulprizio is a Senior Lecturer in the Program in Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. She has also taught at Loyola Marymount University, Hamilton College and the University of Southern California, where she received her Ph.D. Her scholarly work examines ancient attitudes and ideas about gender and sexuality, especially as they are depicted in comedy, satire and other humor-based literary genres.

These interests are explored extensively in her recent book, Gender and Sexuality in Juvenal’s Rome: Satire 2 and Satire 6 (Oklahoma University Press, 2020), which offers a fresh translation of two of Juvenal’s most provocative poems, accompanied by notes and an introduction geared toward undergraduates and those just beginning their study of this challenging ancient author.

She is also interested in the reception of the Classical past in modern comics, graphic novels and animation, and she is the creator of the web archive “Animated Antiquity: Cartoon Representations of Ancient Greece and Rome” (www.animatedantiquity.com).

She regularly teaches courses on ancient tragedy and comedy, ancient sexuality and gender, Homer and the Trojan War, and Greek mythology for the program. She also teaches Latin at all levels and she leads the Maymester course in Rome, “History and Art of Ancient Rome.”