A Message From the Dean
Classic Answers to Perennial Problems
Students who study the classics in USC College often use innovative
means to connect the ancient world to contemporary problems.
Under-standing these ancient cultures provides students with deeper
understanding of contemporary affairs and provides a basis for creative
thinking.
Throughout the department’s offerings, students look to the ancient
world to explore the timeless concepts of leadership, democracy and
diversity, concepts brought to us from democracy’s birthplace in Greece.
In one course, students examine the readings of Sophocles, Melville and
Shakespeare, repeatedly poring through the texts to analyze race,
ethnicity, nationality, gender and religious differences within the
Western tradition.
A new minor examines the political and moral leadership qualities of
history’s tyrants, lawgivers, oligarchs, demagogues and autocratic
emperors.
A collaboration with the USC School of Religion embraces the West
Semitic Research project, a photo archival research project that has
amassed a collection of more than 100,000 images of ancient
inscriptions available for study.
Each summer, a group of classics students visits a tiny island in the Aegean Sea exploring excavations at Despotiko.
In this issue of The College Magazine, we examine in depth these programs and others in our
classics department, which has a worldwide reputation as a laboratory for the future of the classics.
The department helps drive our Language, Mind and Culture Initiative
and is an example of how we value and constantly improve undergraduate
education in the College. Our classics students may do hands-on field
work in archaeology at one time, then use Homer’s “The Iliad” to
understand and analyze the war in Iraq.
All of this reinforces the idea that studies of the ancient world
reveal historical patterns that impact the way our society functions
today.
This exceptional department has gained much prestige in recent years.
Three faculty members have recently won coveted senior fellowships from
the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), given to fewer than
10 percent of applicants.
New faculty appointments provide broadened scope, adding to the
department scholars of late antiquity, the intersection between Greek
and Roman culture and the Mediter-ranean world.
There are four undergraduate tracks for study: civilization and
society; literature and mythology; and separate tracks in language,
literature and culture, in Greek or Latin. This array of concentrations
gives students multiple pathways for academic discovery. The department
also offers the Ph.D. in classics (Greek and Latin) and the M.A. in
Greek, Latin and classics.
Studying the classics teaches students how to think, write, analyze and read with a critical intellect.
Learning about the ancient world provides a solid basis for other areas
students may wish to pursue, such as art history, history, philosophy,
political science, comparative literature, law and other professions,
to name just a few. But most importantly, the classics teach us about
ourselves—where we have come from and how we have been shaped by our
history, culture, language and literature.
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