Charlee Mandy is a second-year student in the Classical Studies Ph.D. program. She is interested in Roman archaeology, art, and social history, particularly that of slavery, religion, and daily life for non-elites. Charlee earned her B.A. from Cornell University (May 2023, summa cum laude) and also studied at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (Spring 2022).
As a member of the Humanities Scholars Program at Cornell, she wrote and presented an honors thesis entitled "At Hearths and Thresholds: The Religious Lives of Slaves in Pompeian Households." This paper synthesized analysis of domestic space, household shrines, graffiti, and literary references to explore the roles of enslaved people in domestic ritual and specifically their relationship to the Lares, deities that may have provided a substitutionary outlet for occluding complete reliance upon enslaved labor.
Charlee works as a field archaeologist and in 2022, 2023, and 2024 took part in the Marzuolo Archaeological Project (MAP) at a site in southern Tuscany that offers a window onto rural crafting communities in the Roman period. She gained experience in data recording and analysis, artifact processing, total station data collection, and trench excavation and supervision. Charlee is also interested in community-engaged work and excavated in 2021 with St. James AME Zion Church in Ithaca, NY, on the Underground Railroad.
Outside of her academic work, Charlee loves writing her science fiction novel and painting landscapes.
Photo credit: Chris Kitchen