Bio

Lena Barsky (they/them) is a teacher, writer, project manager, researcher, clarinet player, and fanfic archivist based in Arlington, Virginia. They are currently a Policy Associate at the National Energy Assistance Directors Organization and the Center for Energy, Poverty, and Climate. 

In July 2021 Lena earned their Masters of Philosophy in Greek and/or Latin Languages and Literature at Oxford University (St Anne’s College). Their MPhil dissertation, “Necropolitics in Ovid,” used a necropolitical framework based in the work of Achille Mbembe, Giorgio Agamben, and Jasbir Puar to read the Minyeides episode of Metamorphoses 4. They examined how necropolitics can help readers understand Pyramus and Thisbe’s myth to be a story about racialized difference and Augustan inheritance laws, and how Hermaphroditus and Salmacis’ transformation from two singular gender non-conforming beings into a third, individual gender non-conforming being might actually exemplify a kind of biopolitical futurity. If you’d like to read this dissertation, please email Lena and they will happily share!

In 2014, Lena graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics-Latin, magna cum laude and with honors. In their senior thesis “Mater, Cyrene Mater: Rethinking Narrative in Virgil’s Georgics 4.325-558,” they used a feminist lens to explore narrative structure, female power, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the production of art as equatable to other types of labor in the world of the Georgics. 

Previously, Lena worked for four years at Legal Momentum, the Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund. They served as  Director of Program Management & Media and, prior to that, Program Manager for the National Judicial Education Program, which educates judges, attorneys, and justice system professionals about gender bias, sexual assault, and the intersection of sexual assault and domestic violence. Lena has also analyzed election data and researched redistricting at the National Committee for an Effective Congress, covered Supreme Court news for the Brown Political Review, and served on two editorial boards of the Brown Classical Journal. They are also the author of CAPS LOCK, a sporadically published e-mail newsletter that started out as one thing (RIP TinyLetter) and has morphed into something else entirely. 😉

To learn more, check out Lena’s resume. To read some of Lena’s writing or watch available recordings of their academic presentations, a selection of their work is available here.

You can reach Lena on Twitter or via email at lena_barsky@alumni.brown.edu.