When I began telling people in Arkansas that I would be coming to Oxford to study philology, I was often met with a follow-up question: “What even is philology?” The term wasn’t one with which many people in the US were familiar; the multi-disciplinary activity of the American philologist had been fragmented and relegated to the faculties of linguistics, literary studies, and classical studies in the 19th and 20th centuries. I quickly settled on “the study of languages and how they change, typically through close analysis of texts” as my go-to definition, but through my study at Oxford it has become clear that there is much more to our field than this.
My course of study at Oxford – the MPhil in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics – builds on a foundation in general linguistic theory and comparative philology to facilitate analysis of Akkadian and Hittite literature, in particular the Gilgameš texts from Ḫattuša (the Hittite capital near modern Boğazkale in central Türkiye). Beyond synchronic and diachronic analysis of Akkadian and Hittite as languages, I’ve found that these texts and the interconnected literary tradition in which they participate are incredibly rich, reflecting the complexity of Mesopotamian social life in the Bronze Age. Since the seminal work of Milman Parry, we’ve known to look for formulaic language in texts of originally oral composition, but few have turned their eyes towards the traditional literature of ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia.
My research at Oxford is focused on formulaic language in the Ḫattuša Gilgameš texts, the challenges that ancient Semitic poetry raises for formulaic analysis, and the peculiarities of contact and transmission that resulted in the texts (and their languages) as we’ve received them. Much of this research involves slow, close reading in Akkadian and Hittite, standing in stark contrast with the often hurried atmosphere of Oxford. I’ve had success with this analysis of the Gilgameš texts so far, and I continue to uncover new features of the Akkadian and Hittite poetic language every day. I’ve also been able to participate in Oxford’s Comparative Philology Seminar and Anatolian Seminar, the 2026 East Coast Indo-European Conference, and Oxford’s Anatolian Languages and Linguistics Summer School, each of which has put me in conversation with scholars approaching humanity through a wide range of texts.
I have a year still to go on the MPhil programme, and have begun applying for PhD programmes in various fields, all of which require the sort of intentional, unhurried reading and attention to human social conditions that I’ve come to love as a new philologist. Without the generosity of the Philological Society through the Anna Morpurgo Davies Master’s Bursary, my studies would have been impossible. Moving halfway around the world is not a cheap endeavour, nor is living in Oxford, but this funding has made it significantly less burdensome. Beyond the practical, it has been an honour to walk in Anna’s footsteps as a philologist at Oxford. tussabliṭāninne; šilma adi šamê erṣeti darûni!
