Isabel Grossman-Sartain

Isabel Grossman-Sartain received her B.A. in Ancient Mediterranean History and Psychology with a minor in Philosophy from Tufts University in 2021. Her undergraduate honors thesis, on the history of ancient Egyptian obelisks as monuments of imperial power beginning with Augustus, was inspired by her semester living in Rome in 2019 in a convent on the Aventine Hill. Witnessing the ancient Egyptian obelisks still standing in Rome sparked a fascination with both ancient and modern employment of these symbols of masculine authority, especially under Mussolini. A Los Angeles native, Isabel has traveled extensively throughout the Mediterranean, including participation in a Bronze Age archaeological survey course in Greece in 2022 through College Year in Athens. Since graduating from Tufts, she has worked full-time as an elementary school music teacher while studying Latin and ancient Greek at U.C. Berkeley.

As a first-year PhD student at ISAW, Isabel intends to broaden her understanding of imperial ideology and tools of power through coursework and research, especially in relation to the lives of women under patriarchy. She is particularly interested in analyzing the limited roles of women within Roman state religion as a manifestation of its dependence upon women's bodies for continued state proliferation. More broadly, she also hopes to research the roles of women in Eastern Mediterranean goddess cults as they compare and contrast with centralized state religion.