Living Latin in New York City

Maria Gerolemou is currently a visiting Ass. Professor in the classics department at Johns Hopkins. She holds a degree in classics from Athens and Munich and specializes in ancient Greek drama, Wunderkultur, and ancient science and technology. She has authored two books: On Drama: Bad Women, Mad Women: Gender und Wahnsinn in der Griechischen Tragödie (Classica Monacensia, 2011) and on technology: Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity" (Bloomsbury, 2023). 

Furthermore, she has taken on the role of editor/co-editor for five collective volumes that explore diverse topics, including miracles (Recognizing Miracles in Antiquity and Beyond, De Gruyter, 2018), mirrors (Mirrors and Mirroring from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Bloomsbury, 2020), the intersection of technology, medicine, sexuality and gender (Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity, CUP, 2023; Body Technologies in the Greco-Roman World: Technosoma, Gender, and Sex, LUP, 2024), and technologies of animation (Technical Animation in Classical Antiquity, OUP, 2024). 

Courtney Roby is Associate Professor of Classics at Cornell University. A specialist in ancient Greek and Roman science and technology, she focuses on the literary aspects of scientific and technical texts from the ancient world, the interaction of verbal and visual elements in those texts, and cognitive-scientific approaches to ancient scientific work. She is the author of Technical Ekphrasis in Greek and Roman Science and Literature: The Written Machine between Alexandria and Rome (Cambridge University Press 2016) and The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria: Strategies of Reading from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Cambridge University Press 2023). Her new book project investigates how the cognitive science concepts of embodied, embedded, and extended mind can inform our reading of ancient scientific activity and writing.

Anna Everett Beek is an Extraordinary Researcher at North-West University. Her studies focus on Latin poetry, gender in antiquity, literary depictions of the supernatural, and the technology of glass and mirrors. She recently published a translation, text, and commentary of Ovid's Fasti, with special attention to Ovid's concept of the civic calendar in relation to the astronomical year. Her current major project focuses on the fantastic moon mirror in Lucian’s True History and its relationship to real-life mirror technology in the ancient Mediterranean.

Kingsley is a sophomore currently attending The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Hailing from Shanghai, China, his biggest passions are theater, filmmaking, and writing. Kingsley has always been intrigued by history, particularly stories from the 20th century and the Classical period. He is extremely excited about this opportunity to be a part of the LLiNYC conference. 

Bill Linney played the saxophone in the United States Army Band "Pershing's Own" for 20 years. After retiring from the band in 2019, he earned a master's degree in Classics from the University of Maryland. He is now continuing his education at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. His interests include Bronze Age scripts, Semitics, the Ancient Near East, archaeology, and producing Greek and Latin educational materials. He is the author of the book Getting Started with Latin.

Jessica fell in love with classics in high school and has never strayed too far from the field. She taught Latin and ancient history in Massachusetts for several years before pursuing her Ph.D. in education at the University of Rhode Island. Today, Jessica teaches foundational courses in education at Coastal Carolina University near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She is interested in the intersection of classical studies and current pedagogy and contemporary applications of classical learning in the U.S.

Roberto Salazar is an experienced polyglot language coach and nomadic classicist, with a passion for teaching Latin and Greek as spoken languages, and an impossible desire to speak all tongues imaginable, and to teach them to those who want to learn them. 

He has taught Latin, Greek, Arabic, German and more in different places around the world, including various Paideia programs, online and on site.  A former fellow of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, where he studied Classics and Philosophy, he's currently writing a PhD dissertation on the reception of Greek tragedy in the Arab World, Modern Greece and Latin America. He has also done research on European Classical Reception and Neo-Latin. 

He has published fiction translations into French and Spanish from various languages including Swedish. In 2017, he was the head literary curator for the French-Colombian Year. 

That's probably why he's still scrambling to complete his PhD at the University of Versailles. 

He currently lives between Athens, Cairo and Saint Denis, France.

Austin Sarker-Young is a second-year undergraduate at Brown University who plans to major in Latin and Chemistry. He is working on a two-year project about the usage of texts, tools, and drugs in Western Surgery from Celsus (1st century) to Vesalius (16th century) under the mentorship of Professor Joseph Pucci (Chair of the Department of Classics) and Professor Harold Cook (Hon. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians).

Apart from medical history, Austin likes Plato’s Apology and Epictetus’ Enchiridion. A hyperpolyglot speaking a dozen languages, his favorite modern one is French, leading him to publish an essay about “Georges Danton” ( The Concord Review , Fall 2020 issue). He is also a Nationally Registered EMT (working on getting his Rhode Island license) and an undergraduate member of the Xian Lab, which studies organic chemistry.

After a decade of service to Benedict XVI and Francis as a papal Latinist, Daniel Gallagher was named the Ralph and Jeanne Kanders Professor of the Practice in Latin at Cornell University. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, the Catholic University of America, and the Pontifical Gregorian University, and has published extensively in medieval philosophy, especially in the areas of metaphysics and aesthetics. He is passionate about handing on the Latin language based on the principles and method of his long-time mentor, Fr. Reginald Foster. Professor Gallagher currently lives with his family in Savannah, where he teaches literature and philosophy at Ralston College.

Salvete omnes, my name is Marina Garanin. Graduated from Heidelberg (Germany) and Oxford, I am currently working on my PhD on Latin translations from Greek at the University of Heidelberg. I taught Latin courses for beginners at the University, also living Latin. I have been practising spoken Latin since the beginning of my studies, and I have been taking part in different Latin (and Greek) speaking events such as the German Septimana Latina, the Schola Aestiva Posnaniensis, the “CAELUM” in Madrid, Living Latin in New York City, “LILIUM” in Florence. Most recently (2022), I participated at the Latin speaking theater festival “Thalia” organized by the Schola Humanistica in Vicenza, Italy. There, I played the part of “Medea” in the tragedy “Medeae Daemones”, in Iambic Trimeters, written by Stefano Vittori, with whom I speak Latin in our every day life. I also write metrical poetry in Latin, some of which are published in the periodical “Vox Latina” from 2019 on; some are awarded with prizes (“Chancellor’s Latin Verse Prize” in Oxford 2017, Certamen Sarbievianum in 2019 and 2021, Certamen “Mimesis – Modernità in Metrica” 2021). In my free time, besides of writing poetry and acting, I like drawing, singing and writing music; also, being a huge dog lover (not having one on my own though), I like reading books about dog behaviour and education. Also, I have a Latin YouTube channel (Musa Pedestris) where you can find poetry recitations, latin vlogs, livestreams, and other videos on Latin.

Milena Minkova is Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky. She has published on Latin literature in its continuity, 12^th century Renaissance, Latin Composition, Latin Pedagogy, and Active Latin. Together with Terence Tunberg, Minkova has co-authored the introductory Latin series “Latin for the New Millennium.” Both Minkova and Tunberg moderate the Institute for Latin Studies, a Graduate Certificate Curriculum associated with the M.A. Program in Classics at the University of Kentucky, in which Latin is taught in its continuity from ancient until modern times and in the target language (since 2020 the Certificate is being offered online as well). Minkova’a most recent volume is a critical anthology of Neo-Latin Florilegium recentioris Latinitatis (Leuven University Press, 2018). 

Terence Tunberg completed his doctoral studies in the Department of Classics and the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto in 1986. He began to devote himself to spoken Latin as a graduate student and has since then regularly taken part in seminars for spoken Latin in Europe and North America. In 1998 he was elected fellow of the Academia Latinitati Fovendae, the Rome-based international organization for maintaining the use of Latin. He has moderated the Conventiculum Latinum Lexintoniense, an annual immersion seminar in spoken Latin, for nearly two decades. Together with Milena Minkova he teaches in the Institutum Studiis Latinis Provehendis at the University of Kentucky, a two-year post-graduate curriculum in which Latin literature and Latin composition are taught entirely in Latin. He has published extensively on prose style in classical and Neo-Latin, and has won international prizes for Latin composition. Together with Milena Minkova he has written a manual of Latin prose composition.

Stefano Vittori had his Bachelor Degree in “Lettere Classiche” at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 2011 with a thesis of Latin language and literature on the rendering of classic metrics in Italian language (supervisor prof. L. Gamberale). Subsequently, he had his Master’s Degree in Orientalistics at the University of Pisa in 2014 with a thesis of Egyptology on the “Dialogue between a Man and his Ba” (pBerlin 3024) (supervisor prof. M. Betrò). At the same University, he completed his Ph. D. summa cum laude and with rights of publication in 2018 with an Egyptology thesis about the orthographic variations in relationship with morphology occurring in the Pyramid Texts (supervisor prof. M. Betrò, prof. A. Loprieno, and prof. A. Stauder). During his Ph. D., he published for specialized journals both in the field of Egyptology and more generally in those of Linguistics (es. “Egitto e Vicino Oriente”, “Latinitas”). In Latin, on “Latinitas”, he wrote an article about the similarities between the ancient Egyptian Lamentation literature and the Roman Satire (“Latinitas” 2014). Since 2018, he has translated popular songs, mostly Disney’s, into Latin, to be sung by Luke Amadeus Ranieri on his channel ScorpioMartianus. Some of these pieces, like “In igni”, “Duce me”, or “Mundus pateat”, have reached a considerable audience. One of the last pieces, “the Wellerman’s song”, is in ancient Egyptian, and adapts the content of the middle Egyptian tale of “The Shipwrecked Sailor” (pLeningrad 1115) using the reconstructed vocalization based on Vergote’s, Osing’s, and Vycichls’s studies. On his own Youtube channel, he delves mainly with metrics, publishing recitations of both prose and poetry, and, since 2022, he began with Marina Garanin a cycle of lessons held in Latin about ancient Egyptian language and writing. Since 2021, he has taught ancient Egyptian language in the Athena Nova private school and Latin and Greek in the Italian public High School “A. Meucci” of Aprilia (Latium), where he developed a method strongly based on historical and comparative linguistics, which is focused on morphology and on etymology as a tool for memorizing lexicon, producing didactic materials of his own. His original poetic compositions have been published on the international review “Vox latina”. In 2022, he wrote a Latin tragedy in iambic trimeters and lyrical meters, “Medeae daemones”, which was awarded two prizes in the international contest “Thalia” (Vicenza, August 1st-7th, 2022).

David J. White is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at Baylor University, where he teaches Latin and other Classics courses. He has degrees from the University of Florida, Penn, Kent State, and the University of Akron. He works on Columella and other Golden and Silver Age Latin writers. He is active in the living Latin community and from 2018-2022 was the Latin Orator for the Classical Association of the MIddle West and South. He has delivered several papers in Latin at Paideia's Living Latin in NYC and taught for Telepaideia since 2020.

John James is a PhD student in Classics at SUNY, Buffalo. He received his BA in Classical Studies from Hillsdale College and his MA in Ancient Philology from the Polis Institute in Jerusalem. At Polis he also taught immersive ancient Greek courses ranging from absolute beginner to advanced reading and composition courses. His MA thesis, “The Greek and Hebrew Background of σπλάγχνα in the New Testament,” explored the Greek bodily and emotional metaphors connected to the Greek word σπλάγχνα from Homer to early Christianity. John’s current research focuses on ancient Greek grammarians and rhetoricians, poetics, and ancient literary criticism. He is always eager to talk about language pedagogy, linguistics, literature, and music, especially in Ancient Greek.

Ἰωάννης Ἰάκωβος, ἐπωνομασμένος Βοανεργής, σπουδάζει τά τε ἑλληνικὰ καὶ ῥωμαϊκὰ παρὰ τῷ τῆς Πολιτείας Πανεπιστημίῳ τοῦ Νέου Ἑβοράκου, ἐν Βουβάλοις (SUNY, Buffalo), κατὰ τὸν διδασκαλικὸν βαθμόν. Συντελέσας δὲ τὸν πρῶτον βαθμὸν τῆς τέχνης ἐν τῷ Λοφονάπης Διδασκαλείῳ (Hillsdale College) καὶ τὸν ἐπιστήμονα βαθμὸν τῆς τέχνης ἐν τῇ Πόλις κοινωνίᾳ (Polis Institute), ὅπου καὶ ἐδίδασκεν τὴν ἑλληνικὴν κατὰ τὴν Πόλις μέθοδον τοὺς μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς μανθάνοντας, τοὺς δὲ τὸν ὑψίστου βαθμοῦ ἀφιγμένους, ἔγραψε θέσιν (ἀγγλιστὶ) περὶ τοῦ σπλάγχνα ὀνόματος ἐν τῇ καινῇ διαθήκῃ· τί ἐστιν αὐτοῦ ἡ κατὰ σῶμά τε καὶ πάθος μεταφορικὴ χρῆσις ἑλληνιστί τε καὶ ἑβραϊστὶ ἀπὸ τῶν Ὁμήρου μέχρι τῶν πατέρων τῆς ἐκκλησίας. Νῦν δὲ συζητῶν τοὺς πάλαι γραμματικούς τε καὶ ῥητορικούς, τὰ ποιητικά, καὶ τὴν πάλαι κριτικήν, ἔτι ἐνθουσιάζει λαλεῖν περὶ τῆς διδαχῆς τῶν γλωσσῶν, γλωσσολογίας, φιλολογίας, καὶ μουσικῆς, μάλλιστα δὴ ἑλληνιστί.

Fernando completed a master's in Ancient Philology from the Polis Institute of Languages and Humanities and a master's in Classics from the Washington University in St. Louis. He also holds an M.A. degree in Literary Studies and a B.A. in Ancient Greek from the Federal University of Parana. Fernando has been teaching Greek since 2008, and his research interests are focused on the history of education, platonism, self-knowledge in antiquity, and second language acquisition.

Linguist Christophe Rico has a doctorate in ancient Greek and holds the French official accreditation to direct PhD research. Member of the Faculty of the University of Strasbourg, he is Professor of Greek Philology at the Ecole Biblique of Jerusalem. Since 2011, he is the Dean of the Polis Institute at Jerusalem where ancient languages (Greek, Latin, biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, classical Arabic) are taught through full immersion as living languages according to the “Polis method”. 

Roberto Salazar is an experienced polyglot language coach and nomadic classicist, with a passion for teaching Latin and Greek as spoken languages, and an impossible desire to speak all tongues imaginable, and to teach them to those who want to learn them. 

He has taught Latin, Greek, Arabic, German and more in different places around the world, including various Paideia programs, online and on site.  A former fellow of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, where he studied Classics and Philosophy, he's currently writing a PhD dissertation on the reception of Greek tragedy in the Arab World, Modern Greece and Latin America. He has also done research on European Classical Reception and Neo-Latin. 

He has published fiction translations into French and Spanish from various languages including Swedish. In 2017, he was the head literary curator for the French-Colombian Year. 

That's probably why he's still scrambling to complete his PhD at the University of Versailles. 

He currently lives between Athens, Cairo and Saint Denis, France.