Meet Riley,
She is an Ancient Studies major and an URA Scholar. She is currently the president of the Ancient Studies Council, a group focused on engaging students in the Classics and sponsoring peer mentorship. For UMBC’s 50th Anniversary celebrations, the council is preparing for Ancient Studies Week, and a series of scheduled events and partnerships. In the future, she plans on pursing a PhD in Classics, concentrating on ancient medicine and sex culture.
Her research will study the development of female liaisons into full-fledged and acknowledged medical professionals in Imperial Rome. Due to societal taboos involving the female body and childbirth throughout the ancient world, women played a primary role in the treatment of so called “female diseases” and an exclusive role in normal childbirth. Male doctors and healers often employed women as intermediaries in the treatment of female clients, and it is generally recognized that doctors such as Hippocrates and Soranus wrote their authoritative treatises on female diseases based upon information given to them by such intermediaries. This project will tell the story of the women who self-identified as medical professionals by situating these few surviving women within the wider development professional medicine in the West.
Read more about her research project here...