Amherst Classics News
Course Information
FOR FALL 2024
See Workday for full descriptions of new (one-time!) Classical Civilization offerings:
CLAS-219: Posthumanist Perspectives in/on Classical Literature (Hansen)
CLAS/SWAG-420: Queer Antiquities: Global Perspectives (Bellei)
Note also Prof. Nelson's ENGL-123/EUST-121: Readings in the European Tradition I, which will count toward the Classical Civilization major.
LATI-441 with Prof. Janssen will read agricultural texts, focusing on Virgil's Georgics.
GREE-441 with Prof. Griffiths will read Sophocles's Electra.
*Please be in touch with Prof. Griffiths if you're planning to take GREE-441 so that he can consider your availability in scheduling the course!
New Amherst Classics Designs by Priscilla Lee '25
Amherst Classics students can look forward to fresh swag, made possible by the talented Priscilla Lee. Priscilla's tribute to Grosvenor House, the department's longtime home, will soon be featured on vinyl stickers, while her laurel-wreathed mammoth will appear on Classics tees. If you've been yearning to say "Tusks up!" in both Latin and Greek, just consult a Classics major's shirt.
Classicists Collaborate on Latinate Bicentennial Swag
Read (here) about how Professors van den Berg and Zanker settled on the best Latin rendering of the Amherst Mammoths' rallying cry, "Tusks up!"
Amherst Classics and the Warrior-Scholar Project
The Chronicle of Higher Education featured Amherst College's Warrior-Scholar Project in an article on August 25, 2023. Professor Griffiths's class on "The Origins of Democracy" has a prominent place in the story.
From the article:
"Torres muses that democracy has often been treated as a 'confidence game,' with charismatic leaders conning the masses into believing in a system that is rigged. Then he repeats his question.
“'I’m going to leave you with a question, rather than an answer,' Griffiths says. “Can democracy be more than a confidence game?'
"At lunch, after the seminar, Griffiths tells Torres that his question was 'exactly the one you should be asking.' That comment, Torres says later, was 'very validating.'
“'I feel ultra confident that I’m going to do everything I want in college, and it’s only Wednesday,' says Torres."