Dominican by birth and New Yorker by upbringing, I tricked myself into writing four junior papers and two senior theses en route to graduating summa cum laude from Princeton in Classics with a WWS certificate (2006; Latin Salutatory). I held the Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship to read for the M.Phil. in Greek and Roman History at Oxford (2008); the next stop was a Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford (2014), generously supported by the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship. After a two-year postdoctoral stint at Columbia’s Society of Fellows, I returned to Princeton. In addition to my appointment in Classics, I am affiliated with the Program in Latino Studies
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My core research and teaching focus is the Roman Republic and early Empire. Blending social-scientific techniques with literary and material evidence, Divine Institutions (in progress; PUP) argues that temple construction and pilgrimage networks held the “imperial Republic” together as it expanded across Italy and the Mediterranean. In a happy case of superfetation, several shorter projects are gestating together with the book: articles on the religious world of Rome’s slaves, divination’s play with local ecologies, and families with quirky names are all in various stages of preparation. Two pieces on Varro—for whom I have a particular fondness—will see the light of publication soon; and a co-edited volume of essays on Roman appropriation (Empire of Plunder: CUP) is approaching the finish line. The common thread is an enduring concern with patterns of cultural and intellectual exchange; an interest in new approaches that can better illuminate those patterns; and an ecumenical attitude to the many different kinds of ancient evidence available to us.
I also work on classical reception in contemporary American and Latin American cultures. An essay on the politics of classical reception in Santo Domingo will appear in The Oxford handbook of comparative political theory, and I’m contributing to a volume on classical receptions in the Black Atlantic. The classical reception hat will stay on as I dig into a new project on conceptions and practices of citizenship across time. Another new project keeping me busy these days has as its major theme waste and its handling from antiquity (and as mediated by antiquity) to the present. Scratching the itch of my fascination with waste is taking me on a journey whose final destination is known only to the gods; early thoughts were distilled into a meditation on waste and funk for Liquid Antiquity, curated by my colleague Brooke Holmes.
A staunch believer in the importance of public scholarship, I’ve written for and sit on the editorial board of the journal Eidolon: past articles include an essay on Greco-Roman receptions in hip-hop
and a two–parter on immigration that was picked up by Newsweek. In 2015 I published a memoir on the intersection of my migratory subjectivity and Dominican identity with my formation as a classicist (Undocumented: A Dominican boy’s odyssey from a homeless shelter to the Ivy League: Penguin Press); I’ve since written shorter pieces for The Guardian, Matter, and Vox. This writing is motivated by the sense that writing and teaching have a vital role to play in the pursuit of social justice, and by the strong conviction that classics and classicists should be allies and champions for black and brown folk. I love nothing more than to proselytize for classics and the humanities.
I have taught the Roman Republic undergraduate survey and co-taught (with Denis Feeney) a graduate seminar on the Middle Republic, a new course, “Citizenships: ancient and modern,” designed to push me—and students who enroll—well beyond our comfort zones.
Having previously taught in Columbia’s Justice in Education Initiative for formerly incarcerated adults and its Freedom and Citizenship Seminar for high schoolers, I look forward to connecting with projects now underway at Old Nassau that promote greater access to educational opportunity.
