M.K. DeVries

I'm a visual designer from Alabama, and a lifetime lover of history. I graduated from Auburn University in 2018 with a B.A. in History and a minor in Economics. My senior thesis was titled, 'The Era of American Philhellenism: A Formative Period for U.S. Foreign Policy and Philanthropy, 1821-1828,' which explores the effects of the Greek War of Independence on the United States in the public and private sectors. For the former, I concluded that, despite popular sentiment supporting government assistance for the Greek revolutionaries, the refusal of the Monroe and Adams administrations to get involved secured the government's credibility against its earliest challenge to the non-interventionist policy later known as the 'Monroe Doctrine.' For the latter, the popularity of so-called 'Greek committees' in nearly every major American city and town occasioned the country's first nationwide endeavor to organize to support an overseas philanthropic cause.

I developed a love for history early in my life when my family moved to Israel for my dad's job when I was three years old. Although we spent most our time living in a kibbutz, we also spent time traveling the country to visit historical sites from Jerusalem to Akko. Before our return to the U.S. a year later we visited Athens, Greece where the seeds were sown for what would become my main historical interest. In 2019, the year after I graduated college, I returned to Greece and spent time visiting sites in Athens and Milos. For most my life, my favorite period of history has been Ancient Greece, but in the past few years my interests have grown to include other civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean world. Some of my narrower interests include: the Attic orators, Carthaginian prosopography, and ancient languages and their scripts.