Congratulations to Julie Mebane on winning the 2025 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit for her book The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought.
"The Charles J. Goodwin Awards of Merit, three prizes given annually, are named in honor of a long-time member and generous benefactor of the Society for Classical Studies. They are the only honors for scholarly books given by the Society. The awards are presented at the Annual Meeting for an outstanding contribution to classical scholarship published by a member of the Society."
With regards to Julie's book the committee writes: "Few tropes are more common in political thought than that of a population as living organism. The citizenry is a body; it has a head of state; its borders are its protective skin, and invaders are imagined as dirt or disease. The metaphor has a long and often insidious history, but its nuances differ considerably across cultures and eras. Julia Mebane has offered an original and erudite account of the evolution of the body politic metaphor across more than a century of epochal change in Rome, from the Catilinarian conspiracy through the formation of Augustan ideology to the fall of Nero. In its insightful account of how a political revolution was both concealed and revealed through imagery, The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought is a valuable addition to scholarship on Roman sociopolitical history and an exemplary first book."
Please visit the 2025 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit announcement to read the full award citation.
This is an enormous honor, and we couldn't be prouder of Dr. Mebane. Extremely well deserved, Julie!
The College of Arts