Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Classics Education
A resource for teachers of Latin and other content related to Greco-Roman antiquity.
Earlier this year, during a conversation about our college plans, a friend of mine was stunned when I told her I studied Latin and Greek. “I just don’t see the classics as a space for people who look like us,” she said. It was a quote that struck me. After all, there was truth in what she was saying: to this day, the faces of the classics still remain predominantly white, male, and wealthy.
As a high school senior, for most of my years studying Latin, I never considered how the classics fit into modern discussions of prejudice and injustice; I simply accepted the pictures and descriptions I consumed of blond, rich families living in colossal villas. But more and more, while studying Juvenal and Cicero and Ovid, I’ve come to realize the extent to which spaces within the classics blatantly walk away from conversations about race, gender, and sexuality — conversations that are more than necessary. In fact, these conversations are critical. Latin textbooks mock enslaved people under the guise of “representing antiquity,” while young students study versions of myths that present sexual violence as “Jupiter’s antics.” Even in the AP curriculum, many discussions of Caesar still glorify him as a great leader, disregarding his genocidal slaughter of the Gallic peoples.
I compiled this document as a resource for educators, as the classroom is often the first place where students get to know Latin and Greek. Personally, I’m very lucky to have teachers and mentors who believe in a more inclusive classics, viewing antiquity with nuance and having real conversations about injustices encountered. But this type of teaching shouldn’t be a privilege — it should be the standard.
My hope is for other students to share the same experience, so that the classics will no longer be an exclusive and elitist field, but rather, like a space that is welcoming to all. While this document is certainly not comprehensive, it outlines steps in the right direction.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION IN CLASSICS EDUCATION
These recommendations and resources for educators are compiled from scholarship and presentations by female, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ classicists. They are given in light of the fact that, too often, the classics have been misused as a tool of oppression, and classics education has in many cases lacked nuance or full perspective. The ancient world was diverse, as the field of classics should be, and in order to preserve the longevity of the study of antiquity, these points are crucial to understand. The lists below are by no means exhaustive, and this is not at all a condemnation of modern classics education — only a recognition that, always, we must keep doing better.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
- Read texts beyond those of the standard canon. Vergil, Cicero, and Horace are important authors in any Latin curriculum. However, by also studying epitaphs, graffiti, and less commonly-studied writers, students are able to interact with texts that are more representative of the Roman public.
- Use textbooks that don’t romanticize the ancient Mediterranean or ignore the injustices, move away from textbook usage completely, or name the problems with them (see below for recommendations). The depiction of Rome in a textbook is one that a student truly internalizes. Many textbooks contain lines that make jokes about slavery, sexual assault, and even genocide — topics that should never be taken lightly. Others present all Roman families as white and wealthy, a notion that encourages the viewpoint taken by white supremacist groups that Rome was a homogenous white empire.
- Have discussions about the violence of Greece and Rome. Appreciating Greco-Roman achievements, culture, and literature is often an excuse to gloss over extreme violence and oppression. It is important to present a more nuanced view of Greece and Rome.Texts such as Juvenal’s Satires can be used as conversation starters. Suggested language for discussing Roman slavery and sexual violence is included in the resources below.
- Acknowledge ancient figures of diverse ethnicities, such as Hannibal, Dido, etc. Recognizing the people of color in Greco-Roman antiquity allows students of color to feel less ostracized in conversations about Greece and Rome, and also contradicts notions of a white Roman empire.
- Acknowledge a spectrum of sexuality in antiquity. Acknowledging the spectrum of sexuality in antiquity both prevents the erasure of the LGBTQ+ community and allows for a more accurate view of history.
- Recognize how the classics have been misused to justify white supremacy. Totalitarian groups and white supremacist organizations have long warped classical literature, art, and ideas to fit their agendas, and informing students about this abuse of the classics allows them to be more informed about what they consume in the media.
- Discuss antiquity beyond the ancient Mediterranean. Greece and Rome weren’t the only classical civilizations, and having conversations about other peoples in antiquity creates a more nuanced and complete understanding of classics.
- Avoid using standardized test scores as indicators of program quality. Overemphasizing test scores — such as from the Latin AP — or using “higher SAT scores” to market Latin classes only encourages educators and administrations to gatekeep the classics. This disadvantages students who underperform on standardized tests, which are inherently unbalanced due to unequal access to resources, classes, technology, and other limitations.
ARTICLES:
The articles listed below are explanations, perspectives, and challenges; they discuss the need for inclusivity in classics and identify the areas where the field must improve.
- White People Explain Classics to Us | by Yung In Chae
- Hold My Mead: A Bibliography For Historians Hitting Back At White Supremacy
- Time for Anti-Racism: A Way Forward for America and Higher Education
- Can’t We Work Together? Reframing Inclusivity in Classics
- Documenting Appropriations — Pharos
- He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?
- The Man Behind the Myth: Should We Question the Hero’s Journey?
RESOURCES:
These presentations, articles, and videos give suggestions and guidance for teaching about crucial topics in a Greek or Latin classroom, as well as making the classical languages accessible for all students, no matter their background or disability status. The classics have earned a reputation for gatekeeping and exclusion, leading to a lack of diversity in the field, and these resources provide ways to offer more support to all students and to discuss Greece and Rome without whitewashing or diminishing acts of violence.
Anti-Elitism
- ACTFL Latin Interpretive Reading Assessment
- Non-Elite Latin for the Classroom — SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE
- Love And Loss: Nothing Says “Happy Valentine’s Day” Like Epitaphs!
- Ancient Graffiti Project
Racial Competency
- Sess. 10B: Tom Di Giulio, Integrating Racial Competence and Anti-Racist Strategies in the Classroom
- Five Tips for Teaching Racial Competency with Racially Biased Textbooks
- A Conversation About Slavery in the Latin Classroom
- Ancient Orientalism in Modern White Ethnonationalism — Pharos
Gender in Latin and Antiquity
- Latin Teachers: Rape Is Not Romantic, So Stop Describing It That Way
- A Style Guide for Gender Inclusivity in the Latin Languag
- Writing and Talking About Non-Binary People in Latin
- Gender Diversity in Greek and Latin Grammar: Ten Ancient Discussions
Miscellaneous
- Race and Ethnicity in Classics Pedagogy: A Starter Pack
- Race and Ethnicity Syllabus Workshop
- Sportula Europe
- Diotíma
- Resources — CripAntiquity
TEXTBOOKS:
The textbooks used in the classroom directly influence a student’s experience with the language. Though traditionally, many textbooks have glorified or glossed over the injustices of antiquity (slavery and rape, for example), newer options bring a more nuanced view to the previous textbook depiction of a blond, rich, and privileged Roman family.
READING LIST:
Books and literature play a large role in studying the classics, as they inform a student’s view of both Greco-Roman antiquity and their own place in the field. The books listed below strive to offer new perspectives, to bring voices to the previously voiceless, and to dismantle white, elite notions of Greece and Rome. Retellings of myths expose injustices as what they are, and novellas written in Latin make the language more accessible to all students.
Retellings
- Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
- Circe, Madeline Miller
- Medea, Christa Wolf
- Ariadne, Jennifer Saint
- A Thousand Ships, Natalie Haynes
- The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker
- Oh My Gods, Philip Freeman
- Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
- Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie
- XO, Orpheus, Kate Bernheimer
- Oreo, Fran Ross
- The Bacchae of Euripides, Wole Soyinka
Scholarship, Commentary, Criticism
- Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, Donna Zuckerberg
- Rome, Empire of Plunder: The Dynamics of Cultural Appropriation, Matthew P. Loar, Carolyn MacDonald, Dan-el Padilla Peralta
- The Classical Debt, Johanna Hanink
- Antigone Rising, Helen Morales
- Ulysses in Black, Patrice Rankine
- African American Literature and the Classicist Tradition: Black Women Writers from Wheatley to Morrison, Tracy Walters
- Re-rooting the classical tradition: new directions in black classicism, Classical Receptions Journal
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