Greek and Latin have been an important part of the University's curriculum since it opened as the nation's first state university in 1795. Graduate degrees in Classics were first offered toward the close of the nineteenth century. After the Second World War, the graduate program began to expand and attract students from around the country, chiefly because of the presence on the faculty of such distinguished scholars as B. L. Ullman, Robert Getty, T. R. S. Broughton, and Henry Immerwahr. In the latter decades of the twentieth century many students worked under the direction of such scholars as George Kennedy, Kenneth Reckford, Philip Stadter, and Jerzy Linderski. (A full list of theses and dissertations from 1910 onwards is available here). The program has been widened and deepened to the point that permanent faculty positions currently number fifteen, while colleagues in departments such as History, Philosophy, English and Comparative Literature, Religious Studies, and Art also contribute to the program. Strong institutional support for Classics has kept these numbers up in the new century with hires at both the junior and the senior level: eleven current faculty members in Classics joined the Department within the last decade or so. The PhD degree programs include Classics, Classics with Historical Emphasis, Classical and Medieval Latin, and Classical Archaeology. Special combinations of Classics with a non-classical field, e.g. English, are also possible. Our thriving non-degree Post-Baccalaureate Program in Classics, established in 2001, is described here.
Extensive resources and opportunities on campus and off enhance the experiences and training of our graduate students. Davis Library, just around the corner from the Department, holds one of the largest Classics collections in North America, and the B. L. Ullman Classics Collection, located in the Department itself, is a reference library catering to the everyday needs of students and faculty alike. The Ancient World Mapping Center, overseen by Professor Richard Talbert of the History Department, is a unique research institution exploring the spatial dimensions of the Greek and Roman world, and is the home of the Barrington Atlas. The Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies or MEMS, in which the Classics Department takes an active part, comprises some sixty faculty members from ten different departments who cooperate in exploring the Medieval and Early Modern world from an interdisciplinary perspective. Duke University’s Classics Department is eight miles away, and a shuttle bus between the two campuses runs every half hour during term; students in Classics in each Department may take classes in the other, courses are sometimes team-taught by Duke and UNC faculty, and faculty from one institution can serve on the MA and PhD committees of students at the other. The Classics Department also participates in the university-wide strategic partnership with King’s College London. The Classics departments of the two institutions collaborate on a regular basis, providing opportunities for faculty and students on both sides to visit the partner department and to develop joint research initiatives. Faculty members on both sides can serve on MA and PhD committees of the partner department, thus enhancing the intellectual diversity and richness of each. Other opportunities for study abroad, including the American School for Classical Studies in Athens, the American Academy in Rome, and the American Research Institute in Turkey, are described under ‘Overseas Study’; the recently established Berthe Marti fellowship provides support for dissertation research at the American Academy in Rome. The strong resources, in combination with the demanding program, enable students to meet successfully the educational and research challenges of the 21st century. The department has a good record of placing its graduates; for a full list of graduate alumni, see here.
Students with good preparation can complete the M.A. in two or two and a half years and the Ph.D. after an additional three or four. At present most M.A. candidates take their translation and essay examinations during the second year of work and finish their theses in the fall of the third year. Those students who continue to the Ph.D. take their doctoral written examinations in their fourth year and are then able to begin concerted work on their dissertations. Students with a strong record in graduate courses may, upon completion of the M.A. exams, petition the Department for permission to bypass the writing of an M.A. thesis and proceed directly toward the Ph.D. M.A. candidates must demonstrate reading facility in one modern foreign language (German, French, or Italian), and Ph.D. candidates must do so in two (German and either French or Italian). For that reason the Department prefers that incoming students already have reading knowledge of at least one relevant modern language. Degree requirements are described in more detail here.
The Department has a special concern in the training of teachers, and it views teaching assistantships as invaluable preparation for one’s professional career. Most students gain teaching experience from the very start of their program, normally in their first year as Instructional Assistants or Teaching Associates, working in a course taught by a faculty member, but normally by their second year as Teaching Fellows, teaching their own courses under the supervision of a faculty member. In this way students become experienced in all the aspects of teaching courses in undergraduate Latin, classical civilization, and Greek and Latin literature in translation. For a full discussion of funding, see here.
Classical archaeology at UNC has remained a nationally recognized strength of the Department of Classics for over fifty years. The graduate and undergraduate programs emphasize the study of material culture as a vital component of research and teaching in classical studies, Mediterranean archaeology, and ancient Near Eastern studies, while substantiating the classical and Mediterranean components of the interdepartmental Archaeology Program. The environment at UNC—and unusually rich and diverse archaeology faculties across four academic units—has allowed us to shape cross-disciplinary research and teaching objectives.
Classical Archaeology at UNC is represented by six faculty members across three different departments—Classics, Art History, and Religious Studies—and supported by five additional classical archaeologists at neighboring Duke University through the Duke-UNC Consortium for Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology. Ten additional archaeologists in the Department of Anthropology and Research Laboratories of Archaeology offer a range of complementary courses in archaeological method and theory, landscape archaeology, complex societies, historical ecology, ceramics, palaeoethnobotany, and biological anthropology.
One goal of the program is to develop innovative field projects that engage faculty and students in collaborative research and teaching. Recent collaboration between the departments of classics and anthropology has led to the design and implementation of a multi-year archaeological field project on Crete, funded principally by two successive NEH grants and a collaborative NSF grant awarded to Classics. The Azoria Project has incorporated teaching and research faculty from both departments—leading to collaborative papers and publications—as well as a field school program involving undergraduate and graduate students from both departments and across the College.
Use the menu to the left under "Graduate" to find out more about our graduate programs.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is committed to equality of educational opportunity. It is the policy of the University and of the Department of Classics not to discriminate against applicants, students, or employees on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, or handicap. Such discrimination is in most cases also prohibited by federal law. Any complaints alleging failure of this institution to follow this policy should be brought to the attention of the University’s Affirmative Action Officer at (919) 966-3576.