The incipit of a piece in the Bi-College News:

This spring, a few hundred Haverford seniors will set out on the most daunting assignment of their college careers—the senior thesis. Some will spend days (and nights) in labs in the Integrated Natural Science Center, while others might be found buried under an avalanche of texts in Magill. Classics major Cassie Gafford HC’09 falls into the second group but is so excited about her topic that even such an avalanche would probably prove enjoyable.

Gafford’s thesis, in fact, deals with natural disasters, though not the library-book variety. She is studying earthquakes during the Second Sophistic period, which lasted from 75 C.E. until 225 C.E. According to Gafford, this was a time when Greece was under Roman rule, but Greek thought was still highly regarded in Rome. “I’m investigating how authors of this period responded to the natural world,” she says, “specifically in the form of earthquakes.”

The questions Gafford must ask in her research relate not only to literature but to religion, science, and culture as a whole. “Were natural catastrophes seen as punishment from the gods, random natural occurrences, or omens?” she wonders. “I want to know what Greeks and Romans wrote about the destructive, unforeseen shaking of the ground.”

… looks interesting.

• ‘From the Lab’ Thesis Edition: Cassie Gafford and Ancient Earthquakes