Anna Bonnell Freidin

Anna Bonnell Freidin is a cultural historian of the Roman empire. Her research and teaching focus on the history of gender, childbearing, domesticity, and science and medicine. Her forthcoming book, The Matter of the Mother: Childbirth and Risk in the Roman World, is under advance contract with Princeton University Press.

At U-M, she is a core faculty member in the Interdepartmental Program in Ancient History, as well as an affiliate of Classical Studies and the Science, Technology, and Society Program. 

Recent Publications

• "Animal Wombs: Visualizing the Uterus in Graeco-Roman Culture," Classical Philology 116.1 (2021): 76–101.
• “The Birthday Present: Censorinus’ De die natali,” The Journal of Roman Studies 110 (2020): 141–66.
• “Carrying Risk in Antiquity and the Present,” in Mona Oraby and Myrna Perez Sheldon ed., “Religion and Reproductive Science,” The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere (2020).

Undergraduate Courses

• The Roman Family
• Rome: The Roman Empire and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World
• Women in the Ancient Mediterranean
• Growing up in the Roman World 

Fields of study

• Ancient Rome and the Mediterranean
• Gender and society in Greco-Roman antiquity
• Medicine and magic 
• Roman imperialism