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The College of Arts & Sciences
Classics is the original interdisciplinary academic field at the heart of both European/western civilization and today’s Liberal Arts education. We teach and research the languages (Greek, Latin), literature, history, philosophy, science, art, and material culture that survive from the worlds of ancient Greece, Rome, and Late Antiquity. Through archaeology and art history we investigate and analyze the material record and environment of these civilizations and their neighbors – accessing a past beyond the texts of the elite and their mostly male voices to explore fully this world from top to bottom.
Christopher S. Celenza will suggest some answers that arise from considering the history of the liberal arts, medieval and early modern universities, and the rise of the arts and sciences in the modern era.
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The gathering in Rome is unique both in structure and theme, says Daniel Gallagher, a professor of practice in the classics department.
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Faculty researchers paint a picture of what will happen if multilateral organizations fail to protect Armenian cultural heritage as Azerbaijan shells the disputed region.
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Our 34 new faculty will enrich the College of Arts & Sciences with creative ideas in a vast array of topics.
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The funded community-engaged learning projects provide opportunities for students to excavate ancient Pompeii, establish a community garden in Moshi, Tanzania and more.
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Faculty from six colleges across Cornell tackle issues ranging from the health of endangered wild dogs to the spread of misinformation through social media.
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A&S faculty members will delve into questions ranging from quantum computing to foreign policy development and from heritage forensics to effects of climate change.
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Neither language is spoken today, but hundreds of world-historical masterpieces were written in those two languages. Ancient Greek is the key that unlocks Homer, philosophy, tragedy, comedy, history, particle physics, and half the Bible. Latin is the key that unlocks epic poetry, stage drama, fables, rhetoric, law, and the reawakening of the West in the Renaissance. The two languages together allow you to observe, like a firsthand witness, the downhill slide of Rome’s thousand-year civilization from an American-style democracy to an authoritarian empire. Studying them, and the voices of the women and men who spoke them, reveals more than just the mindset of a people that built the Coliseum and the catacombs. Those voices also reveal the foundations of the modern world order—from secular humanism to religious orthodoxy. They’re also a lot of fun!
Classics doesn’t just involve learning your Latin principal parts (important though they are!). Our students and faculty engage with the Greco-Roman world in multiple ways, whether speaking “living Latin” in Rome, taking part in archaeological digs or traveling seminars to Europe, curating exhibitions, or putting on performances of ancient plays. From experiments with ancient technology to the use of myth in contemporary art, we celebrate and explore the enduring relevance and reinvention of the Classical past within the 21st century.