Carissa Chappell
About:
Carissa Benjamin Chappell is a PhD candidate in Classics with an emphasis in literature and theory. They specialize in Imperial Greek prose, rhetoric of the Second Sophistic, and identity formation in ancient literature. Their work blends philology, critical theory, and narratology to reveal how modern frameworks impact our understanding of the ancient world. Carissa’s dissertation argues that an emphasis on the ancient novels as milestones in the history of sexuality has obscured the genre’s role in other discourses of power—its internal, fictional logics parallel and reinforce existing hierarchies of desire, enslavement, and narrative in the Roman empire.
In 2024, Carissa was awarded the John J. Winkler Memorial Prize for their essay “Leave No Trace: Absence and the Asexual Possibility in Leucippe and Clitophon.” Their research has been supported during the 2025-26 academic year by the University of California President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship, and their work as an educator received campus-wide recognition through the 2025 GSA Excellence in Teaching Award. They teach courses on mythology, ancient gender and sexuality, and ancient citizenship, and they mentor undergraduate students in Classics and through the Promise Scholars program. Through UCSB’s Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, and Learning, they promote inclusive, accessible pedagogy guided by the principles of Universal Design for Learning.
Before attending UCSB, Carissa received degrees in Classics (BA) and Chemistry (BS) from Emory University in Atlanta.
Publications:
“Leave No Trace: Absence and the Asexual Possibility in Leucippe and Clitophon.” Helios. Forthcoming.
“Cognitive Geographies of Catastrophe Narratives: Georeferenced Interview Transcriptions as Language Resource for Models of Forced Displacement.” Lamar, Annie K.; Schoinoplokaki, Emmanouela; Castle, Rick; Chappell, Carissa; Seet, Allene M.; Shilo, Amit; Nahas, Chloe. Published proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics, January 20, 2025.
“Georeferenced Interview Transcriptions from the Nakba Archive.” Lamar, Annie K.; Schoinoplokaki, Emmanouela; Castle, Rick; Chappell, Carissa; Seet, Allene M., https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/BXPYUP, Harvard Dataverse, V2. November 04, 2024.