Catherine Bonesho, Assistant Professor of Early Judaism at UCLA, has received one of the fellowships from the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan related to the study of Diversity in Second Temple Judaism for the 2021-2022 academic year. During the fellowship, she will work on her second book project, entitled “Kings, Queens, and Caesars: Gentile Rulers in Early Jewish Literature.” Her project aims to integrate Classics and Jewish Studies by investigating the trope of gentile (non-Jewish) rulers in early Jewish literature through case studies on the Jewish depictions of rulers like Alexander the Great, Titus, and Cleopatra. By contextualizing these depictions with Classical sources, this study illuminates the diverse Jewish attitudes toward Greece and Rome and shows that gentile rulers become what Jewish authors need them to be—potent literary tropes by which the authors can critique, praise, or ultimately reimagine their worlds.