Rate My Professor Angelo Mercado

Angelo Mercado is Professor of Classics at Grinnell College, where he also serves as chair of the Linguistics Concentration. He earned his Ph.D. in Indo-European Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006, with a dissertation titled 'The Latin Saturnian and Italic Verse'; an M.A. in Latin from UCLA in 1998; and a B.A. in Classics, magna cum laude, from Loyola Marymount University in 1996, with a minor in Spanish. Before joining Grinnell College as Assistant Professor in 2010—advancing to Associate Professor in 2016 and Professor in 2022—he held several visiting academic appointments, including Visiting Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in spring 2018, Visiting Scholar in Linguistics and Classics at Harvard University in fall 2014, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Colgate University from 2009 to 2010, Lecturer of Literature (Classical Studies) and Language at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 2007 to 2008, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Literature (Classical Studies) at UC Santa Cruz from 2006 to 2007.

Mercado's research centers on ancient metrics, with a focus on Old Latin and related Italic meters, including meter in Italic prayer texts and the role of word accent in Latin meters adapted from Greek quantitative models. He is best known for his monograph Italic Verse: A Study of the Poetic Remains of Old Latin, Faliscan, and Sabellic, published in 2012 by the Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck. Other significant publications include the co-edited volume Vina Diem Celebrent: Studies in Linguistics and Philology in Honor of Brent Vine (Beech Stave, 2018); 'Rhythm in Some Prayers to Jupiter and Tefer Jovius' (2022); 'Word Stress in the Early Latin Hexameter' (2021); 'Rhythm and Responsion in Some Italic Prayers' (2019); 'Accent in Lucilius’ Hexameters' (2018); and 'Observations on Verbal Art in Ancient Vergiate' with Joseph F. Eska (2005). His contributions appear in prestigious venues such as Cambridge University Press, Brill, and Hempen Verlag, with forthcoming chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Latin Metre. Mercado has delivered invited lectures, such as 'Greek Lyric Meter: Form, Structure, and System' at Cornell University in 2022, and numerous conference presentations on Indo-European metrics and poetics. His scholarship has garnered 108 citations on Google Scholar and reviews in journals including The Classical Review, Gnomon, and Kratylos. Earlier in his career, he received a UCLA Research Mentorship Fellowship (2000–2001). At Grinnell, he teaches courses on the ancient Greek world, Latin language and literature including Vergil and Plautus, Indo-European language and culture, mythology, and linguistics.