Associate Professor, Roman Social History, Latin Literature, and Roman Religion
Graduate Program Director
BA Honours (Trent), MA (Victoria), PhD (Chicago)
Phone: 905 688 5550 x5372
Fax: 905 984 4859
Email: fdolansky@brocku.ca
Fall 2023 Teaching
CLAS 4P65: Disasters in the Ancient Mediterranean,
LATI 4P05/5V05: Caesar’s Gallic Wars
Winter 2024 Teaching
LATI 4P01/5V23: Catullus
My research mainly concerns the customs and practices of the Roman family, especially religious rites, in Italy and the provinces during Rome’s central period (c. 200 BCE to 200 CE), and the history of children and childhood in Greco-Roman antiquity. I have published on several family festivals and rituals including the Parentalia, Saturnalia, and the toga virilis ceremony which marked freeborn boys’ coming of age, in addition to studies on the relationship between dolls, gender, and identity formation; material evidence for children’s play; and education in the Roman world. My interests in Roman social and cultural history are broad and touch upon areas such as gender and sexuality, religious minorities, death and commemoration. Among literary authors, I have recent publications on Ovid’s Fasti, and specific interests in Cicero’s Verrine Orations and Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities. I have been and currently am involved in a variety of graduate student theses and major research papers on historical and literary topics related to Roman family life, childhood in antiquity, Roman religion, Latin poetry and prose, and would be happy to discuss with students future projects in any of these areas.
2011 recipient of the Brock University Award for Excellence in Teaching for Early Career Faculty
Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Advisory Council
2023. “Belief and ideology.” In C. Laes and V. Vuolanto (eds.), A Cultural History of Youth: Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury, 133–50.
2022. “Religion and Divination at Court.” In B. Kelly and A. Hug (eds.), The Roman Emperor and his Court, ca. 30 BC – ca. AD 300: Historical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 395–418.
2022. “Household religion and the court” and “Public cult and the court” (sections VI and VII of Chapter 4: “Rituals and Ceremonial”). In B. Kelly and A. Hug (eds.), The Roman Emperor and his Court, ca. 30 BC – ca. AD 300: A Sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 172–183.
2021. “Different Lives: Children’s Daily Experiences in the Roman World.” In L. Beaumont, M. Dillon, and N. Harrington (eds.), Childhood in Antiquity: Perspectives and Experiences of Childhood in the Ancient Mediterranean. London and New York: Routledge, 244–257.
2020. “Education in the Roman World.” In M. Gibbs and M. Nikolic, with P. Ripat (eds.), Themes in Roman Society and Culture: An Introduction to Ancient Rome, 2nd ed. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 179–199.
2020. “Regal Resonances: Ovid, the princeps, and Rome’s Remote Past in Fasti 2, 4, and 6,” Illinois Classical Studies 45.1: 80-108.
2020. “Learners and learning.” In C. Laes (ed.), A Cultural History of Education in Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury, 83–100.
2019. “Nocturnal Rites to Appease the Untimely Dead: The Lemuria in its Socio-Historical Context,” Mouseion 16 (Series III): 37-64.
2019. “Household and Family.” In R. Uro, J. J. Day, R. Demaris, and R. Roitto (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 171-186.
2018 (with S. Raucci). Rome: A Sourcebook on the Ancient City. London: Bloomsbury.
2017. “Roman girls and boys at play: Realities and representations.” In C. Laes and V. Vuolanto (eds.), Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World. London and New York: Routledge, 116-136.
2016. “Strained relations, gender differences, and domestic ideals: the significance of two Roman family festivals,” in S. L. Budin and J. M. Turfa (eds), Women in Antiquity: Real Women Across the Ancient World. New York. 905-914.
2016. “Rape, the family, and the ‘Father of the Fatherland’ in Ovid, Fasti 2.” In A. Keith and J. Edmondson (eds.), Roman Literary Cultures: Domestic Politics, Revolutionary Poetics, Civic Spectacle. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 39-58.
2020. “Religion at Court,” Caesar’s Palace: Inside the Court of Early Imperial Rome, Symposium at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON.
2019. “The Emperors’ Private Devotions,” Classical Association of Canada Annual Meeting, Hamilton, ON.
2018. “Bodies of Work: Young Female Dancers in the Roman World,” Classical Association of the Middle West and South Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM.
2018. “The Material World of Roman Children’s Play: Artifacts, Agents, and Ideals,” Keynote address for 13th Annual Department of Greek and Roman Studies Undergraduate Conference, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON.
2017. “Regal Resonances in Ovid’s Fasti,” Classical Association of the Middle West and South Annual Meeting, Kitchener, ON.
2017. “Amy Richlin’s Challenge: Erasing/Tracing Roman Women’s Participation in Religious Life”, invited paper for organized panel on “Feminist Scholarship in the Classics: Amy Richlin’s Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women.” Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting, Toronto, ON.
2016. “Cultivating the next generation: children and ritual learning in the Roman family,” Classical Association of Canada Annual Meeting, Québec, PQ.
Vice President, Niagara Peninsula Society of the Archaeological Institute of America
Member of the Board of Correspondents, Mouseion
Advisor, Ontario Classical Association
