The Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study at University of London, has awarded Patricia Rosenmeyer the Dorothy Tarrant Fellowship for 2020-21.
The Dorothy Tarrant Fellowship commemorates the contribution of a pioneering figure in UK classics. The Fellowship is awarded to scholars from universities outside the UK with research interests in any field of classical studies.
Patricia Rosenmeyer’s book project considers the reception of Greco-Roman antiquity by Jewish scholars and writers in the first half of the 20th century. She argues that Classics functioned as a kind of “passport to high culture” for many European Jews between the two World Wars. Much work has been done on the misappropriation of classical symbols by fascist governments of that time, but less attention has been paid to the Jewish humanist scholars whose classical education shaped the way they interacted with the contemporary world, and whose classical scholarship in turn altered the discipline for their successors. For the duration of the Dorothy Tarrant Fellowship, her plan is to focus on the experiences of young Jewish refugees who studied Greek and Latin, first as students and then as enemy aliens in internment camps in the UK and Canada. She hopes to be able to consult archives in the UK (The National Archives, Kew), and Canada (Library and Archives, Ottowa).