Rachel Love joined the Department of the Classics at Harvard after completing her doctorate at Yale University in 2019 and her B.A. at Tulane University in 2013. Her research is primarily focused on Imperial Latin prose, specifically historiography, epitome, and other forms of 'sub-literary' writing. Within this area, she is particularly interested in the legacy and influence of Republican writing forms on the literature of the Empire.
Her first monograph, Writing after Livy, is currently under review at Oxford University Press. The book explores the culture of historiographical epitome in Latin literature from the 1st to 5th centuries CE and argues that epitomes, which have long been treated as aberrant symptoms of decline within Latin literature, are instead creative works of history that are integral to the character of Roman historiography. Through Livy's ethnographies, she also has an ongoing interest in ancient Gauls, Celts, and Galatians, which has inspired a few recent projects: "The Dying Gallogreek" and " Stereotypes of Celts in Ancient Greek and Latin Texts" (see CV). She has further interests and ongoing projects in the fields of early modern reception, ethics of reading and Roman reading cultures, and literary fragments and theories of fragmentation. For Rachel's chapters and articles, as well as works under review and in progress, see the Curriculum Vitae tab on the upper menu.
Her next book project will examine how the social and intellectual context of the formalization of the field of "Classics" in the 18th and 19th centuries informed some of scholarship's most basic assumptions around the origins of Roman historiography. The only Roman genre whose founders wrote in Greek, history has long occupied an awkward space between between art and science. This monograph will reexamine the evidence we have for the earliest Roman historians (Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus, Postumius Albinus, and Cato, among others) and deconstruct key conjectures which still remain at the heart of our understanding of early Roman history.
At Harvard, Rachel teaches a range of classes both in Latin and in translations. She has taught advanced Latin classes on Latin prose and Imperial Latin literature more broadly. Outside of the department, she has taught for several years in the First Year Seminar Program and the General Education Program, bring classes in translation on "What is a Classic?" and Classical Mythology to a wider Harvard audience. For more, see the Teaching tab on the upper menu.