Dan-El Padilla Peralta

Dan-el Padilla Peralta holds degrees from Princeton, Oxford, and Stanford. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Roman Republic and Empire, with a particular emphasis on trends in religious practice. He is currently working on a book project (Divine Institutions: Religion and Community in the Middle Republic) that brings together literary close reading, archaeological interpretation, and quantitative modeling to track how changes in religious observance held the Roman Republic together in the period of its imperial expansion. Also in preparation is Cargo Culture: Roman Literary and Material Appropriative Practices, a volume of essays he is co-editing with Matthew Loar and Carolyn MacDonald (Stanford). Other research interests include Greek and Roman historiography (and its early modern reception); travel and mobility in the ancient Mediterranean; sociological and comparative approaches to the study of ancient history; and classical receptions in contemporary American and Latin American cultures. In a possibly misguided effort to anatomize his own reception of the Classics, Dan-el has also written a memoir (Undocumented), to be published by Penguin Press in the summer of 2015.