Professor of Classics Ellen Oliensis is known for her work on Roman literature and literary culture, especially the poets of the Augustan era. Her work centers on questions of erotics, authority, gender, and interpretation. Her last book, Freud’s Rome: Psychoanalysis and Latin Poetry (Cambridge, 2009), reinvigorated Freudian criticism through close readings of Catullus, Virgil, and Ovid.  Her current book project traces the intertwining of the writing life and the life of love in Ovid’s Amores. She is also working on a commentary on Book 6 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a book well known for its influential versions of the Arachne, Niobe, and Philomela myths.