Dennis Trout, professor of ancient Mediterranean studies in the College of Arts and Science, has been awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome. Considered a highly prestigious award by the National Research Council, the Rome Prize affords its recipients the opportunity to live at the American Academy in Rome, use the academy’s research library and other resources, and join the academy’s community of Rome Prize winners and visiting scholars. 

Trout will spend ten months at the academy completing his book "Reimagining Rome: Emperors, Popes, and the Cult of the Saints." The book is a study of the transformation of the city of Rome from the fourth century through the early seventh. It considers how a city once full of gods became a city full of saints and emerged during this time as the Latin West’s most important pilgrimage center, redefined by the relics and tombs of the city’s numerous martyrs and saints.

Trout is the chair of the Department of Classics, Archaeology, and Religion and has published widely on the phenomena of urban, civic, and religious transformation in the late ancient world with particular attention to the material and epigraphic, as well as literary sources preserved from this age.

For more than a century, the American Academy has awarded the Rome Prize to support innovative and cross-disciplinary work in the arts and humanities. The selection process is highly competitive with less than three percent of applicants being awarded Rome Prizes for 2024-25. Next year’s cohort of thirty-one scholars and artists was publicly recognized in a ceremony on April 25 at Carnegie Hall.