Welcome to the Department of Classics!
The Department of Classics invites students to share in the study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome and the civilizations they helped to shape. We offer several undergraduate majors and minors, including an honors option, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. Areas of strength include Greek and Latin literature and social, political, architectural, and intellectual history. Collectively, we emphasize the long and complex story of how diverse communities of the Mediterranean basin, western Eurasia, and beyond have engaged with classical culture and thought from antiquity through the Middle Ages, the early modern period, and up to the present day. Because we are a small and collegial department, students have the opportunity to work closely with distinguished faculty and to develop individualized, and often interdisciplinary, curricular paths fitted to their own interests and experience.
Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities presents
The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives
Josiah Ober (Standford University)
Is democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country’s system of governance is being “tested” or is “under attack.” But is the future of democracy necessarily so dire? In The Civic Bargain, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober push back against the prevailing pessimism about the fate of democracy around the world. Instead of an epitaph for democracy, they offer a guide for democratic renewal, calling on citizens to recommit to a “civic bargain” with one another to guarantee civic rights of freedom, equality, and dignity. That bargain also requires them to fulfill the duties of democratic citizenship: governing themselves with no “boss” except one another, embracing compromise, treating each other as civic friends, and investing in civic education for each rising generation.
All guests (non-USC) must RSVP to prijic@usc.edu for campus registration.
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Location
The Department of Classics is located in PED 130 on the University Park Campus. Our front door is located on the backside (southeast) of the building, opposite of ADM (Bovard) and Associates Park.
3560 Watt Way, PED 130, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0652