Michaela Maguin is a PhD student in the Rice University Department of Art History. Her research focuses on the reception of the literature and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome in later cultures and contexts, and the implications these later translations and interpretations have on myth-making and identity. She completed her master’s degree in 2025 at California State University, Long Beach. Her master’s thesis discussed iconographic manifestations of the Vergilian Golden Age within Cinquecento Rome and how the artists Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino crafted a visual language of the Vergilian Roman identity. For this she received the Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award. Michaela holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles.