Classical Studies

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.
Learn More About the Program

Studying Classics at Bard and want to get more involved?

Submit a translation to Sui Generis

Sui Generis is a publication of the Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures program whose goal to provide students an outlet to produce original creative work in a foreign language or translate the work of other authors.
suigeneris.bard.edu/
Student Clubs

The Classics Club is a student-run group that hosts gatherings where students can meet up and talk about anything related to the study of classics. Latin Table is a weekly occasion for students to converse informally in Latin in order to gain a better linguistic and affective understanding of the language.
More about Student Work
Apply for an Internship or Summer Award

Many excellent opportunities for summer research and study in Classics are available both in the US and abroad as well as funding resources and research opportunities.
More Opportunities

The Extent of the Ancient Mediterranean World

Courtesy Ancient World Mapping Center

Current News

View all News + Events

James Romm’s Book Plato and the Tyrant Reviewed in the Washington Post

Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece, a new book by James Romm, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College, has been reviewed in the Washington Post. The work is “a deft and engaging work of history, philosophy and biography, as well as a meta-commentary on the perils of regarding canonical thinkers as disembodied minds,” writes Becca Rothfield for the Post.

Daniel Mendelsohn Interviewed in the New York Review of Books

Daniel Mendelsohn, the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, spoke with the New York Review of Books about his new translation of Homer’s Odyssey for the University of Chicago Press. In conversation with Lauren Kane, Mendelsohn discussed the challenges of balancing both poetic beauty and literal meaning in translating, the ways in which the story handles depictions of family relationships, and why the epic is experiencing a resurgence in modern retellings.