P. Lowell Bowditch received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Brown University in 1992. She has been at the University of Oregon since 1993, where she teaches a wide range of language and literature courses on epic, tragedy, gender and sexuality in antiquity, and the Augustan era. Her research focuses on the interface between literature and socio-political relations, with a particular emphasis on literary patronage and issues of gender and sexuality in the Augustan poets. She is the author of Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage (Los Angeles and Berkeley 2001) and of articles on Ovid, Propertius, Horace and issues of translation. She is currently writing a book on love elegy and Roman imperialism.