The department offers two majors. The majors in Classics (Greek, Latin, or Classics) center on work in the original languages, whereas the major in Ancient Studies has an interdisciplinary focus. All members of the department are available for major advising and students ideally choose an advisor who can help them develop their required senior essays.
Read more about our different majors, minors, and current classes here
Students may fulfill their language requirement at Barnard and have it count towards the Classics and Ancient Studies degree by taking a year's worth (or one intensive class) of Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, or Aramaic.
Our majors graduate well prepared for graduate careers in Classics, Egyptology, and related academic fields such as museum work (Andrea Myers Achi, pictured above, is an Assistant Curator of Medieval Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), history, philosophy, archaeology, art history or comparative literature. They also enter successful careers in secondary school teaching, arts administration, as well as law, medicine and biological sciences, business, politics, public service in both the government and non-profit sectors, journalism and creative writing, publishing, library science, and the arts (especially theater, film and dance).
The Classics Department is the beneficiary of the Matthew Alan Kramer Fund, whose principal purpose is to support the production of plays in Ancient Greek or Latin. Students of the department have produced Antigone, Medea, Alcestis, Persians, Eumenides, Cyclops, Electra, Clouds, Trojan Women, Rudens, Helen, Trachiniae, Bacchae, Hippolytus, Heracles, Birds, and Persa, which have provided an exciting and different learning experience for the participants.
The 2024 BCADG production is Mangled House, an original collage of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Seneca’s Thyestes. The play will be performed from March 29th to 31st, 2024, at the Minor Latham Playhouse. Tickets can be bought here.
Every effort is made to introduce students to considerable resources for the study and influence of the Classics in New York City, including plays, films, and museum and gallery visits.
Our students are involved in an ongoing project to compile and annotate particularly interesting texts, media, and scholarship relevant to the study of race and ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world. The resources are organized along methodological lines, and the site serves as a broad and productive entry for individuals interested in race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism in antiquity.
Congratulations to Bella Watts (BC '22, Ancient Studies) for her admission to Phi Beta Kappa! Bella graduated this December, having excelled at Barnard and during her year abroad at Oxford. Her senior thesis “‘did five thousand years of history propel us through the streets?’: Transhistoricism, Fragmentation and Resistance in Sapphowoman and The Mirror of Love" focused on how two comics—Alan Moore’s The Mirror of Love and Gillian McKnight’s Sapphowoman—engaged with classical antiquity as a form of resistance against the homophobic policies of Margaret Thatcher’s government. We are so proud and will miss you, Bella!
The Barnard Columbia Ancient Drama Group's much-anticipated production of Mangled House (performed in ancient Greek with subtitles) opens on Friday, March 29th. You can purchase tickets here.
Please join us in celebrating Dr. Helene Foley with a Conference in her honor highlighting her amazing legacy and lasting impact. The program and list of presenters can be found here.
This website is an ongoing project spearheaded by Barnard and Columbia students interested in the study of the ancient world and in feminist archaeology. Its focus is methodological and asks what various analytical techniques can tell us about societal constructions of gender in the past.
Join us on April 19th for the 2024 Classics and Ancient Studies Lecture in Sulzberger Parlor (Barnard Hall 3rd floor) at 4 PM.
This talk explores Martha Graham’s retelling of the myth of Clytemnestra with a focus on how Graham both draws upon and distances herself from Aeschylus’ dramatization of the myth in his Oresteia.
To RSVP, please email Anna at ahotard@barnard.edu.