Dr. Debra Trusty

Debra Trusty is currently a lecturer for the Department of Classics at the University of Iowa. She received her BA in archaeology from the University of Evansville and MA and PhD in Classics from Florida State University. Her dissertation investigated the political economies of Mycenaean Greece through an analysis of cooking ware vessels. Since completing her dissertation, she has turned her research toward fringe reception studies of the Classical world, including the use of Classical material in video games, board games, young adult and adult novels, comic books, movies, and TV. She incorporates these materials into many of the classes she teaches at UIowa, including Classical Mythology, Myth Makers of the Classical World, Food in ancient Mediterranean Studies, and City of Athens. In the summer (when she isn't leading study abroad sessions in Greece) she hosts a live Twitch channel where she and her friends play video games that were influenced by Classical mythology and civilization, including Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Hades. You can watch the recordings of streams on her YouTube channel “Doctor Debitage.”