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The Department of Classics continues a long Carolina tradition of offering undergraduates and graduate students access to research by world-class faculty on many fascinating aspects of the ancient Greek, Roman, and broader Mediterranean worlds. We study, write about, and teach the language, literature, history, art, and archaeology of the Greek and Roman world and its relevance to today. Classics is inherently multidisciplinary, drawing on various forms of evidence and modes of interpretation in order to understand the past, and to explore how later periods, including our own, have found classical antiquity meaningful, or in some cases have misused the classical tradition in ways we must now study with an unsparing eye.

Current graduate research and teaching include Homeric epic; Aegean prehistory and protohistory; Archaic poetry and Greek drama; performance; Greek topography and mortuary archaeology; Greek and Roman historiography; women and gender studies; Hellenistic and Roman Near East and Egypt; Hellenistic and Roman art; religion, sacrifice, magic, and the underworld; Roman comedy and satire; Hellenistic, Republican and Augustan poetry; the Second Sophistic; paleography and Medieval Latin; and the reception of the classical world. Current archaeological fieldwork includes the French Mission to the Eastern Desert in Egypt and the Azoria Project on Crete.

Our five undergraduate majors are Greek, Latin, Combined Greek and Latin, Classical Civilization, and Classical Archaeology. We offer courses in Greek and Latin from the beginning to the advanced levels, and a broad range of courses in which all readings are in English, many of which are popular with both majors and non-majors. Many of our students study abroad; many combine a major in classics with a double-major in another field. Some of our graduates go on to successful graduate study in classics or classical archaeology or related fields such as anthropology, religious studies, and ancient history, while others pursue a variety of careers in fields such as law, medicine, media, business, science and technology, many after degrees in graduate or professional schools. We believe both that the study of the classical world continues to be valuable in and of itself, and also that training in classics provides skills and perspectives that are useful in any field.

Faculty Publications

Recent Faculty Contributions to Edited Volumes

Announcements

Duncan’s Ugly Productions profiled in UNC Research Stories

Posted 6 days ago

Professor Al Duncan’s forthcoming book, Ugly Productions: An Aesthetics of Greek Drama, was profiled in the November 14, 2024 publication of UNC Research Stories (formerly Endeavors Magazine). The book, Duncan’s first, is due out in February 2025 from the University … Read more

Xenophon on the Trial of Socrates

Posted 2 months ago

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Classics presents “Xenophon on the Trial of Socrates”, a lecture by Professor David M. Johnson, a professor of Classics, School Languages & Literature at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The talk … Read more

Persius’ Funeral Feast: Satire 6 & the Death of the Satirist

Posted 2 months ago

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Classics Department presents “Persius’ Funeral Feast: Satire 6 & the Death of the Satirist” by Professor Kate Meng Brassel of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Classical Studies. The talk will take … Read more

Rachel Sarvey Awarded Salisbury Family Honors Thesis Research Award

Posted 2 months ago

Rachel Sarvey, a fourth-year Classical Archaeology major at UNC, has been awarded the Salisbury Family Honors Thesis Research Award from Honors Carolina in support of her senior honors thesis research project, “Egyptian Amphora Stamps from the Hellenistic Period,” a study … Read more

Baragwanath wins Arts and Humanities Research Grant

Posted 3 months ago

Emily Baragwanath was one of nine UNC researchers awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Grant to support her participation in an international workshop looking anew at Socrates’ Trial, Politics, and Religion, to be held at Piryoi Thermis, Lesbos, Greece, in … Read more

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