Humanities Ph.D. student, Jennifer Bates Ehlert, will defend her dissertation titled "Classical Reception and the Matineé Girl: Art, Modernity and Looking in Nineteenth Century London".  This thesis tells the story of the nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century British matinée girls -young women whose devotion to theatrical idols was shaped by a popular interest in the Classical Greek world. Through her engagement with West End actors, who emulated living statuary, she reimagined Classical sculpture as something living, modern, and personally meaningful. By drawing on Classical reception, visual culture, and fan studies, this thesis argues that antiquity gave the stage a legitimizing patina, allowing for decadent productions that featured muscular heroes. Here, the matinée girl escape from her daily tedium. In tracing her practices and the importance of the classicized male form as a site of entertainment, this study positions the matinée girl as a forerunner of modern fan culture.