Classical Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study encompassing the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome. We seek to understand the languages, literatures, histories, and visual and material cultures of the premodern Mediterranean world—from the Bronze Age to the dawn of the Middle Ages, from the Iliad and the Odyssey to Saint Augustine, and from Greece, Italy, France, and Spain to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Greek-speaking kingdoms of the Indian subcontinent. We approach these ancient societies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including linguistics, art history, archaeology, anthropology, and philosophy, while also considering the long and complex legacies of ancient Greece and Rome in art, language, politics, and culture from antiquity to the present day.
Scholarships
The Extent of the Ancient Mediterranean World
Courtesy Ancient World Mapping Center
Classical Studies Spotlight
Collecta in Classicis: Together in Classics
Collecta in Classicis: “Together in Classics,”* provides a space for scholars, teachers, and students to have a conversation about inclusivity in Classics, what that means, what it looks like, and why Classics is not always inclusive. We welcome scholars who have engaged critically with diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, physical ability, and more as it relates to their experience in the field of Classics, or in their study of the Classical World, or both. Furthermore, we hope to include voices of marginalized groups typically silenced either in the past, or even today, by the Classics. How we make Classics more inclusive and accessible, and what that means and looks like, are difficult questions. We hope to encourage productive dialogues that contribute, in individual steps, to the transformative work needed in order for the field of Classics to be reimagined. Collecta in Classicis is supported by the Inclusion Challenge through the Office of the Dean of the College. See below for a list of upcoming events in the series. These events are open to the campus community.
*A note on the name: The Latin title is representative of Classics, and having the words declined in the neuter, accusative, plural is representative of the inclusivity. The neuter excludes neither men nor women, while also including people identifying outside of masculine or feminine binaries. The plural is—quite literally—denoting that Classics is for and made up of all people.
- 12/05Monday1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Kline, College Room
- 12/06Tuesday5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium
A Roman Road, 1648 - Nicolas PoussinTuesday, December 6, 2022
Tim Whitmarsh, University of Cambridge
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Narratives take place in space and time. This talk considers how the revolutions in road networking in the time of the Emperor Augustus had decisive effects on the development of two new literary forms: one is the novel, and the other will be revealed on the day.
Current News
Bard College Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Wins Italy’s Prestigious 2022 Malaparte Prize
Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College Daniel Mendelsohn has won the 2022 Malaparte Prize, Italy’s highest honor for foreign writers and one of the country’s most prestigious literary awards. Mendelsohn won the prize for his body of work in literary criticism, translation, and narrative nonfiction. He will receive the prize at an awards ceremony held on the island of Capri at the beginning of October.Bard College Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Wins Italy’s Prestigious 2022 Malaparte Prize
“It is thrilling and somewhat daunting to be in the company of such writers as Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow as a recipient of this prize,” Mendelsohn said, on learning of the prize. “And, as a person who has devoted his life to the study of European civilization, I am particularly moved to have my work so warmly appreciated in Italy, a country whose culture I, as a classics scholar, particularly revere.”
In its citation, the Malaparte jury singled out the themes of exile, displacement, and memory in Mendelsohn’s three major memoirs, especially The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, an investigation into the deaths of six relatives who perished during the Holocaust in what is now Ukraine. “The choice of Mendelsohn may seem like a tribute to current events and to Ukraine,” says Gabriella Buontempo of the 2022 Malaparte Prize decision. “In truth, at the time we decided it, the Russian aggression did not start. But when literature is really well addressed, almost naturally its themes turn out to be current.”
Named for Curzio Malaparte, an Italian journalist and short story writer who died in 1957, the Malaparte Prize has been awarded to Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, Nadine Gordimer, Donna Tartt, and Vaclav Havel, among others. The jury of this year’s award included: Leonardo Colombati, Giordano Bruno Guerri, Giuseppe Merlino, Silvio Perrella, Emanuele Trevi and Marina Valensise.
Daniel Mendelsohn, Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia (MA) and Princeton (PhD). Aside from The Lost, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award in the United States and the Prix Médicis in France, Mendelsohn’s books include: An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017), named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Newsday, Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus; The Elusive Embrace (1999), a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; three collections of essays; a scholarly study of Greek tragedy, Gender and the City in Euripides’ Political Plays (2002), and a two-volume translation of the poetry of C. P. Cavafy (2009), which included the first English translation of the poet’s “Unfinished Poems.” His tenth and most recent book, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate, was published in September 2020, and he has just completed a translation of Homer’s Odyssey, to be published by University of Chicago Press in 2024.
Post Date: 09-19-2022
Interview: Bard Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Discusses His Most Recent Book on Between the Covers, Tin House’s Literary Podcast
Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities Daniel Mendelsohn talks with David Naimon, host of Tin House’s Between the Covers podcast, about Mendelsohn’s book Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate, which weaves together the stories of three exiled writers Erich Auerbach, François Fénelon, and W. G. Sebald. “As we all know, just to make an obvious point, we’re living in a world in which the power of narratives—true, false, deliberately false, accidentally false—is something of vital importance in our lives and that is our existential struggle now,” says Mendelsohn.Interview: Bard Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Discusses His Most Recent Book on Between the Covers, Tin House’s Literary Podcast
Post Date: 08-02-2022
