Bio

My name is Silvia Alice Miotti and I am a PhD candidate at Boston University in the Department of Classical Studies. I am particularly interested in visual images and symbols in Ancient mythologies – from the Enuma Elish to Hesiod’s Theogony – and in the complexity of Greek Mythology – Apollo, the Enfant Terrible of the Olympian Gods, put a spell on me like a cruel lover during a summer vacation in the South of France.

I am interested Ovid’s Metamorphosis and in the art of “leggerezza”, that unique lightness that Ovidio employed before Calvino theorized it in its Lezioni Americane. I am also interested in Dante’s Divina Commedia and in the re-birth of Venus during the Renaissance (with Poliziano and Boticelli).

My philosophy as a scholar and a teacher is that specialization is extremely important, but that we should avoid building walls between different disciplines.

For this reason, when I teach Prometheus I like to talk about Frankenstein (the Modern Prometheus) and the future of Artificial Intelligence. I am convinced that new ideas flourish when a strong knowledge of a specific topic is associated with the capability to connect it with apparently very distant topics. You can find an example of this connection in the first episode of the Podcast Flowers on Mars.

Before living in Boston I worked in London as a teacher and as a photographer. I wrote a book while working in Brussels and I lived in Switzerland for a short time.

I also work as a journalist and you can find my articles here. In this website you can find also links to my pictures, poems and art works.

Other things I like to do are playing the flute, playing capoeira (an afro-brazilian martial art and game), climbing and hiking.

Check for my complete resume here.

This Bio will be updated. Many things will depend on me and many other, as it is said in Homer, θεῶν ἐν γούνασι κεῖται. lie on the knees of the Gods.

Contact me, I’d love to hear from you!