Jessica McCutcheon
Jessica McCutcheon is working on the final bits of her dissertation about fear in Latin epic after a productive research year as a Shelden Fellow on the Yale University Dissertation Fellowship. Her thematically structured project explores the use of fear as a narrative device in the epics of Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius through the categories of broad narrative trajectory, generic manipulation, and speech — both poetic and political.
Jessica argues that fear creates fissures in epic narrative and that these fissures allow the poet to shift the scene - or the focus of a scene — and to highlight how fear put pressure on the narrative. Jessica has presented papers on Homer, Virgil, Catullus, Hesiod, and most recently on the transformation of bucolic and agrarian landscape in the epics of Virgil and Lucan. Her research interests include Augustan poetry, epic, Hellenistic poetry, the intersection of speech and silence, and vision and visualization as a literary and cultural construct. Along with her dissertation, Jessica grows a flourishing indoor garden in her study.
Supervisor: Christina S. Kraus
Degrees
- MPhil Yale University, Classics, May 2010
- MA Yale University, Classics, December 2007
- MA University of Toronto, Classics and Ancient Studies, November 2004
- BA University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Latin, Greek, Art History Minor, December 2001
Recent Teaching Experience
- Part-Time Acting Instructor, Yale University
- Fall 2011: Elements of Greek Grammar (Introductory Level)
- Fall 2009: Latin Prose: An Introduction (Semester 3 – Apuleius Book 1 and 3)
- Fall 2008: Elements of Latin Grammar (Introductory level)
- Teaching Fellow, Yale University
- Spring 2010: The Roman Empire: Writing Course
- Spring 2009: Introduction to Latin Literature (in translation): Writing Course
