JELLE STOOP
I studied Classics as an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (2003–2007) and at the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven in Belgium (2002–2003). I joined the graduate program at Yale in 2007.
Dissertation
- "Honorific Habits: Praise and Portraits in Hellenistic Communities" studies Greek inscriptions that accompanied honorific statue portraits. I argue that we can reassemble a civic discourse on stone that was authoritatively concerned with these as social artefacts. Documentary and literary inscriptions draw on the same honorific idiom. The actors involved constituted their own statue networks, which could be formed among individuals or polities. My central thesis is that the ancient portraiture habit was a democratic practice that enabled polities as well as individuals to level out events of historical rupture, positive or negative (e.g. outstanding benefaction or oppressive domination), into the symbolic sphere of egalitarian continuity.
Supervision
- M. Fantuzzi (Columbia) and J.G. Manning (Yale). This project has earned me The Michael and Sophie Rostovtzeff Fellowship (earned for 2011–2012), allowing formal training in Greek epigraphy and travelling the sites to survey the relevant inscriptions.
Research projects
- "Epideictic topography and portraiture in Statius's Silvae 1.1" (working title) is an article-length study of topographical and art historical references in Statius's poem for Domitian's equestrian statue in the Roman forum. Avoiding actual description of the statue, Statius combines narrative techniques drawn from epigraphic tags as well as literary epigrams.
- "Not so idyllic: the mental tool of pastoralism in Theokritos" (working title) is a book-length study that seeks to identify the object of pastoralism in the Theokritean oeuvre, together with documentary and visual evidence. Pastoralism constitutes an elaborate euphemism for ownership, poverty, and slavery, and the Idylls mystifie the characters' responses of fear and loss. The Idylls illustrate an "outillage mental" significantly different from its subsequent literary appropriations.
Publications
- "M. Rostovtzeff and the longue durée of P. Briant." (Accepted for colloquium volume.)
- "Two copies of a royal petition in the Ptolemaic era (163–145 BCE)." (Re-edition with commentary of two drafts of P.Tebt. III.1 771; submitted)
Presentations
- With a broad interest in language and history, I have presented on an array of topics over the last few years: monasticism (Dalhousie, 2009), Naevius (CAC, 2009), Vergil and Heaney (FIEC, 2009), literary papyri (ICP, 2010), inscribed epigrams (Groningen, 2010), Latin poetry and statue portraiture (APA, 2011), Rostovtzeff and Bickerman (Yale, 2011), and Greek epigraphy and statue portraiture (CA, 2012).
Teaching
- I have enjoyed teaching or assisting a wide variety of classes at Yale, from 2009 onwards: in language (beginning Latin; beginning Greek; advanced Greek), literature (Latin literary culture), and history (Hellenistic history).
