{"id":857,"date":"2023-04-19T11:39:18","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T18:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/clas\/?page_id=857"},"modified":"2023-04-19T11:39:19","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T18:39:19","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/clas\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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A Brief History of the Classics Department at USC<\/h1>\n
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The department has grown considerably since its creation in 1880, when a single faculty member, Rev. Freeman D. Bovard, was responsible for instruction in what were then two separate departments, Greek and Latin. These separate units would join in 1917 to form a single Department of Classical Languages and Literature.<\/p>\n

Today, the department has a dozen faculty members, with interests ranging from Greek and Latin literature to social, political, architectural, and intellectual history of the Mediterranean basin, western Eurasia, and beyond. The department is also committed to reaching beyond and fostering engagement with Classics everywhere. Working with the Los Angeles Veterans Collaborative, it has for instance developed the project\u00a0Warrior Bards: Veterans Exploring Ancient Drama,\u00a0where veterans explore these ancient works and take on complex issues that span millennia.<\/p>\n

Some milestones of the department<\/strong><\/p>\n

1880: Creation of the department of Greek and the department of Latin<\/p>\n

1882: Foundation of the \u201cAristotelian Literary Society,\u201d open to men only<\/p>\n

1882: Foundation of the \u201cAthena Literary Society,\u201d for women<\/p>\n

1906: Ruth Wentworth Brown is the first woman to join the department as assistant professor of Latin and German<\/p>\n

1917: Fusion of the two departments of Greek and Latin into the Department of Classical Studies<\/p>\n

1925: Ruth Wentworth Brown becomes the department\u2019s first female chair<\/p>\n

1972: The journal\u00a0Ramus\u00a0is founded by current USC Classics professor Anthony Boyle, who serves as the continuing editor along with Helen Morales of UCSB Classics<\/p>\n

1974: The department spearheads the USC student exchange program, later extended to other departments<\/p>\n

1970s-1980s: the department is one of the first in the US to expand its focus on classical philology to include some of the new theoretical approaches that were conspicuous in cultural and literary studies: structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, human sexuality, and gender studies.<\/p>\n

1980: The chair of Classics,\u00a0David Wiesen, is appointed Dean of the Humanities, integrating humanities at USC into the larger cultural life of Southern California<\/p>\n

1983: The department hosts a conference entitled \u201cThe Aesthetics of Obscenity\u201d giving visibility to a new area of research that had been opened up, in part, by members of the department<\/p>\n

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1991: In September, USC Classics hosts the fifth meeting of the \u201cPacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar,\u201d directed by Anthony Boyle and Donald McGuire and featuring classicists from the USA, Australia, and New Zealand<\/p>\n

1992: Foundation of the USC-UCLA Seminar in Roman Studies by Anthony Boyle and Bernard Frischer<\/p>\n

1994: Creation of the undergraduate lecture course, Diversity in the Classical Western Tradition, by Professor Thomas Habinek<\/p>\n

2009: Foundation of the Premodern Mediterranean Seminar Series, in collaboration with USC\u2019s History department and supported by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute<\/p>\n

2010s: The USC-UCLA Seminar in Roman Studies and the USC\/UCLA Greek Colloquium merge into the annual USC\/UCLA Classical Studies Seminar<\/p>\n

2015: Organization of the Warrior Chorus initiative, which invites veterans to study and perform Greek drama, by Peter Meineck (New York University) and William Thalmann (University of Southern California). This program had its first year at USC under the name Warrior Bards in 2019<\/p>\n

2016: The chair of Classics, Thomas Habinek, is appointed the first chair of the new Society of Fellows in the Humanities at USC, a think tank devoted to interdisciplinary research and intellectual exchange<\/p>\n

2017: The Classics Department moves from Taper Hall to the Physical Education Building (PED 130)<\/p>\n

2019: Establishment of the Center for the Premodern World, with which the Classics department partners closely, to support interdisciplinary study of the global premodern at USC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-857","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHistory - Department of Classics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/clas\/history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"History - 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