Undergraduate student Petra M. Creamer’s research paper, “Isis over Rome: An Examination of the Popularity of the Isaic Cult in the Roman Empire” has been selected from a national essay contest to be published in the 2014 issue of The Journal of Theta Alpha Kappa, sponsored by Theta Alpha Kappa (national honor society in theology and religious studies).   The essay, written in Professor J. Albert Harrill’s Ancient Roman Religion course (CLAS 3708), applied an innovative sociological method focusing on the general phenomenon of “status inconsistency” to explain the popularity of the Isis cult among women in Roman society, and it examined a remarkable range of primary sources from ancient literature (Apuleius, Josephus, Juvenal) and Greek and Latin epigraphy, to ancient art (reliefs and frescoes) discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum.  A graduating senior majoring in anthropology, who has taken many classics courses, Petra will further her studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s doctoral program in Art and Archaeology in Mediterranean Antiquity on a 5-year graduate fellowship.  Congratulations!