Classics

Marko Vitas has obtained a PhD in Classics, and an MA in Assyriology and Egyptology (through Brown’s Open Graduate Education program). His research explores cultural exchange in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean in the late 2nd and early 1st millennium BC, with a focus on mythology and literature. His dissertation discusses the Myth of Destruction in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite and Greek sources. Marko spent the 2022-2023 academic year at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, where he studied anthropological and comparative approaches to the religions and mythology of the ancient world. Marko returns to Paris in 2024 as the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Postdoctoral research fellow. His most recent publications include papers on Plato’s use of Homer and Hesiod, and on Chicago Akkadian Dictionary.

Achievements: 

• 2020 CAMWS Presidential Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper (“Name Replacement as a Stylistic Device in Pindar’s Epinician Odes”)
• Open Graduate Education Program (2020)
• 2024 Loeb Classics Library Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship

Publications: 

• “The Disturbing Locus Amoenus in Plato’s Phaedrus,” Hermes (2022)
• “The Chicago Akkadian Dictionary: Contexts and Perspectives,” Infotheca – Journal for Digital Humanities (2023)
• “Hesiodic Influence on Plato’s Myth of the Cicadas,” Plato Journal (2023)