A first-year student in the Classical Studies Ph.D. program, Ethan Drake Johnson is an aspiring comparativist interested in interdisciplinary approaches to ancient ecological, cosmological, and utopian thought. They hold two bachelor's degrees—one in philosophy and one in history—from Utah Valley University.
During their undergraduate degree, Ethan pursued a research project concerned with the intersection of sovereignty and the human-animal difference in Ancient Greek, Ancient Indian, and Central African thought. A portion of this project has resulted in a publication on people-eating kings in Archaic Greek and Vedic Indian political thought appearing in Arethusa.
In the future, Ethan would like to learn more about the history of hierarchical thought in the Greek and Sanskritic worlds. They are particularly interested in how hierarchy manifests on a cosmological and ontological level, especially surrounding topics such as the scala naturae, the different hypostases of late Platonism, and the relationship between the varṇa-system and gastropolitics in Ancient India, particularly around the trope of the mātsyanyāya, 'the law of the fish,' the idea that without a king the strong devour the weak.
Ethan is also interested in the reception of ancient thought. They are currently pursuing a project concerned with the politics and aesthetics of appropriating ancient ideas of solarity in certain avant-garde figures and works: in particular, Sun Ra's salvific jazz, Antonin Artaud's Heliogabalus; or, an Anarchist Crowned, and the Cubo-Futurist opera Victory over the Sun. These mobilizations of ancient solarity draw from the ideologies of a handful of ancient imperial formations (e.g. Akhenaten, the Sol Invictus cult, the Solar Dynasty of Epic India) as well as from the idea of the sun as an ersatz Form of the Good in the history of Platonism. This project is guided by ecological considerations of the sun in Georges Bataille, Alexander Chizhesky, and more recently Oxana Timofeeva—figures whose notions of solar politics offer a more robust way of understanding our world in a time of ecological and social disaster.
An enthusiastic teacher, Ethan has experience as a TA for courses on the history of ethical thought, and they also have experience developing teaching and tutoring curriculum as a Writing Center administrator at their alma mater.
At Columbia, Ethan is very excited to study in an interdisciplinary program of ancient cultures across the ancient Mediterranean, and they are looking forward to continuing their training in the history of philosophy, and the history of ancient thought and culture more generally. Outside of the academy, they love cooking, camping, traveling, dumpster-diving, doting on their cat, and playing music with their partner. Email Ethan Drake Johnson