Laura Harris (she/her)

My work examines Latin poetry of the Augustan and early imperial periods, particularly the work of Ovid, and questions of gender and sexuality through a queer theoretical lens. I am especially interested in how study of the ancient world and queer, trans, and asexuality theories can inform one another. I am also interested in elegy, especially Tibullus, and elegy's intersection with epigraphy and material culture. My dissertation “Virginitate frui: Charting Asexuality in Latin Poetry” reads sexual rejection in Augustan literature and culture through a queer and asexual lens, to show how asexual resonances in Latin poetry create possibilities of alternative queer lives and how compulsory sexuality manifested in Augustan Rome. I have chapters forthcoming in the volumes Early Modern Asexualities and A Cultural History of Trans Lives in Antiquity. 

During the 2026-27 academic year I will be the Crake Fellow at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick.