Jordi Alonso's journey to Classical Studies was circuitous but inevitable. Holding English degrees from Kenyon College (A.B. '14), Stony Brook University (MFA '16), and University of Missouri (Ph.D. '21) in Creative Writing and English Literature, Jordi began exploring his passion for Greek and Latin starting as an undergraduate. At Kenyon, his senior thesis morphed into his first book of poems: an exploration of Sapphic fragments titled Honeyvoiced (XOXOX Press, 2015). At the University of Missouri, he served as a consultant and translator for Dr. Noah Heringman's digitization of the Vetusta Monumenta, a print series originally published from 1718-1906 by the Society of Antiquaries of London and written partially in Latin. (https://scalar.missouri.edu/vm/index). While a PhD student at the University of Missouri, Jordi began his dissertation on 19th century Victorian poets' and painters' depictions of nymphs and fauns and their relationship to changing sexual mores. This turned out to be too much for one book; "μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν" is a statement that was as true in Callimachus' day as it is in ours. Jordi then split that project into its three components: a book about Victorian nymphs, one about Victorian fauns, and one about a certain Victorian poet's fascination with Greek. That is how he became an accidental Elizabeth Barrett Browning scholar, writing his dissertation on her Hellenic poems.
At Columbia, Jordi hopes to focus on Hellenized Egypt in some form having recently begun a verse translation of Nonnos' varied and virtuosic Dionysiaca.