Student Assists with Collegiate Course Development

Senior Audrey Tai has spent the past two summers collaborating with a DePaul professor on the design of a new course and producing a research paper in the process.

Advocating for gender rights and elevating the voices of women of color has always been important to Tai, as a woman of color. After taking a few college courses on feminism philosophy, she became interested in amplifying women’s voices throughout history. Tai built upon her Latin studies in Upper School Latin teacher Sean Miranda’s class, and, with his support and encouragement, she began reviewing the classical canon with an eye to reclaim women’s voices, past and present.

A Pilates instructor whom Tai had worked with happened to be an ancient Greek and Latin professor at DePaul. When the two connected on the topic of reclaiming ancient women’s voices, a fire was ignited. Professor Alessandra Sweany was in the process of designing a new DePaul course examining ancient gender norms reflected through classical literature in the Mediterranean and invited Tai to help.

Tai read, annotated and assessed primary/secondary sources, focusing on poetry from Propertius and Sulpicia. For two summers, the duo met weekly to discuss women’s roles in elegy as the poet or the subject. Tai then developed a research paper arguing that the women’s speaking part in elegy is reflective of Roman societal gender roles and can be used to preserve autonomy. 

Tai presented her research at the Illinois Junior Classical League (IJCL), where she engaged her peers in a trivia game centering Sulpicia’s writing and sparking dialogue about other ancient female writers forgotten in the historical record.

While we wait for Tai to finalize her research paper and find a place to get it published, you can share in an abstract here.

Tai commented, “I look forward to pursuing further research opportunities both during my time at Parker and after graduation.”