She specializes in Latin literature, Roman cultural history, and history of ideas. She received her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 2004. In 2004-2005 she held the APA-NEH postdoctoral fellowship at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich. She taught at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, before coming to Princeton in 2007, where she currently holds the Jonathan Edwards Bicentennial Preceptorship.