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Ellis Hall portico
Classics and Religious Studies Research & Scholarship

Classics and Religious Studies Research & Scholarship

Ƶ's Classics and Religious Studies (CARS) department is comprised of award-winning faculty members, who have extensive expertise in their fields. Faculty members have published multiple referred articles in top-rated journals. Since 2017, they have authored or co-authored 16 books among them.

CARS faculty are very dedicated to the success of their students and offer them many research opportunities. As a smaller department, faculty and students get to know each other well, fostering a welcoming and engaging community.

Presidential Researchers

Loren Lybarger in '24-25 and Neil Bernstein in '22-23
Loren Lybarger
Neil Bernstein

Fred Drogula Wins National Award for Teaching Excellence

Excellence He has dramatically enhanced student engagement with the ancient world by creating new courses and a new club focused on monster literature.
Dr. Drogula's Work

Recent Faculty Accomplishments

Click each faculty member to review their latest accomplishments.

Professor
Neal Bernstein
  • Neil Bernstein’s most recent book,  (Oxford, 2025), was published on June 20.
  • His book chapter: “Latin Sophists and Rhetors From the Age of Trajan to the Age of Constantine,” also recently appeared in , ed. Gavin Kelly and Aaron Pelttari. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025).
  • He has received a contract from Oxford to publish Statius, Thebaid 6: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, co-authored with Antony Augoustakis.
  • He delivered a paper at UC-Davis on Lucan's Bellum Civile in March 2025.
  • He will give a paper at Vanderbilt in October 2025 on Statius's Thebaid.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Haley Bertram
  • Haley Bertram presented “Corinthian Ceramics at Syracuse: Re-Framing the Narrative” at the Corinth and Syracuse: A Two Way Relationship conference in Syracuse, Sicily, and submitted it for the proceedings.
  • Haley Bertram joins the department as a Visiting Assistant Professor after serving as a Resident Instructor at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. She earned her Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati in fall 2024, with a dissertation titled “Producing for the Mediterranean World: Corinthian Pottery Abroad, 750–500 BCE.”
  • Over the summer, she returned to Arma, Greece as senior staff with the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project (EBAP).
  • She continued investigations of terracotta figurines from Ancient Eleon for a catalogue publication and helped organize the University of Victoria’s undergraduate field practicum.
  • She also undertook research in Ancient Corinth to revise her dissertation’s early chapters into an article for submission to Hesperia.
Professor
Brian Collins
  • Brian Collins is Co-Editing Routledge Companion to the Mahābhārat.
  • He taught his popular online course CARS 2410: The Global Occult during the second summer session.
  • He contributed entries on Raymond Buckland (Seax Wicca founder) and the Church of All Worlds for an upcoming exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Sex
  • Collins submitted a 5,000-word essay on sacrifice in Hinduism and Buddhism for the Bloomsbury Handbook of Mimetic Theory.
  • He also conducted interviews and attended a music festival in Buena Vista, CO, for research on his new book, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Metamodern Music and Mythology.
Associate Professor
Cory Crawford
  • Cory Crawford delivered an invited lecture at Yale Divinity School in April titled “Who’s Afraid of a Female Priest? Biblical Narratives Confront Kenite Traditions.”
  • He presented three research papers:
    • at Cambridge University on “Alphabets in a World of Hieroglyphs,” to be published in an edited volume
    • at the American Society for Overseas Research on “Hazor Ceramic Rattles and the Sensory Experience of Cult,” to be submitted to an archaeological journal
    • and at Boston College’s “Graphic Signs of Religion in Antiquity” conference on “Iconic Politics and the Philosophy of Perception.”
  • In May, he led the Ping Institute Summer Seminar for regional high school teachers on ancient writing systems.
  • Over the summer, he served as field supervisor for the Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project in Turkey, accompanied by three OHIO students, with findings to be presented and submitted for publication this fall.
Professor
Fred Drogula
  • Fred Drogula was awarded the  Excellence in Teaching Award.
  • He was also awarded OHIO's Jeanette Grasselli Brown Teaching Award in Arts and Sciences.
  • He has a new book forthcoming from Oxford University Press titled Spheres of Control: The Origins of Government in Early Rome, which provides a new reconstruction for the formation of the Roman Republic.
  • He also has a related article forthcoming from the American Journal of Philology titled “The Origins of Law in Early Rome,” which challenges traditional views on how the Roman legal system developed.
  • He has been invited to give a paper in Oxford (UK) this fall exploring the intellectual history of Roman concepts of authority.
Professor and Department Chair
Loren Lybarger
  • Loren Lybarger delivered an  at the University of Oslo in June titled “Religion and Identity in the Palestinian North Atlantic: Chicago, Copenhagen, and Oslo.” The talk reported findings from his current research on Palestinian refugee and immigrant experiences in Scandinavia.
  • He continued his fieldwork in Oslo and Copenhagen over the summer.
  • In February 2025, he gave the  address at the 11th Annual Middle East and North African Studies Symposium at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. The talk, titled “Transcending Catastrophes: Transformations of Palestinian Identities Since the First Intifada,” drew from his research in the Middle East, North America, and Northern Europe. 
Associate Professor
Myrna Perez
  • Myrna Perez completed a fellowship at the  and was elected a fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion.
  • She published  (John Hopkins University Press).
  • She authored:
    • “” (Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences)
    • and “Taller Than a T‑Rex” in  (John Hopkins University Press).
  • She gave invited talks at:
    • the Penn (“Christian Nationalism and the Afterlives of Scopes”),
    • Yale and Denison (“Criticizing Science”),
    • and Vassar (panelist, “Science & the Culture Wars”).
  • She delivered the keynote address at the University of Erfurt’s “Truth Politics Between Science and Society” conference.

  • Classics and Religious Studies News

    Keep up with all Classics and Religious Studies news, including recent faculty awards, research, and accomplishments on the OHIO Today news site.

    Classics & Religious Studies News