The Modern Argonauts

Northwestern University, USA

e-mail: nrscohen@gmail.com

Nava Cohen is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature and Classics at Northwestern University, working on the reception of figures from Greek mythology in contemporary Anglophone YA literature. Her research interests also include the pedagogy of reading Latin and Greek, on which she co-wrote an article “Approaching Latin as a Human Language: The Linear Approach for Reading” for The Classical Outlook, 98.1 (2023), 10–12, with Caroline S. Kelly.

Nava studied Latin from ages eight to twelve in an urban program inspired by the work of Rudolph Masciantonio. After a long hiatus, she returned to the Classics as an undergraduate at Northwestern, where she minored in Latin, and also studied mathematics and Russian literature.

After graduation, Nava taught Latin to young adolescents for eight years in an independent school. She then returned to the school where she had started her Classics studies and for the next fourteen years taught Latin to all students, who ranged from age five to twelve. Nava first fell in love with mythology at this time, as she told the stories of the ancient Greeks and Romans to her enthusiastic students, who inspired her with their zeal for the subject. 

Nava established and curated a lending library for her students with hundreds of fiction and non-fiction titles related to the ancient world. She enjoyed best of all making and receiving recommendations for well-loved books. In the classroom with her five-year-olds, she focused on the basic stories of heroes and monsters, with her six-year-olds she told stories from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and with her seven-year-olds she introduced Roman mythology before the diving into the Aeneid. It was during this time that Nava started thinking about how we tell ancient stories to young students, a question that informs her current research.

Along the way, Nava earned a Master of Science in Education. She returned to full-time studies at Northwestern twenty-seven years after first matriculating there. 

Nava plays numerous roles within national and local classics communities in the United States. She serves as the chair of the American Classical League’s Exploratory Latin Exam, a contest geared towards Latin students as young as eight years old; as a state legate for the Society for Classical Studies; as Engagement Chair and Liaison to Schools and Colleges for the Illinois Classical Conference; and on the planning committee of the Illinois Classical Conference/National Louis University Latin Pedagogy Workshop, among assorted other roles, both formal and informal. Nava is a frequent presenter on pedagogical and literary topics at state and national conferences. In 2022, Krishni Burns invited Nava to join the board of Calliope’s Library. In 2023 Nava and Krishni began collaborating on the lessons on Athena and Hestia for the Modern Argonauts project. 

In June 2023, Nava was honored with the American Classical League Merens Award, recognizing sustained and distinguished service to Classics.

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