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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.
The Department is delighted and grateful that a Pucci Prize has been established in honor of Piero Pucci - and we thank the generous supporters who have helped to start a fund towards creating this prize - (of $1000) to be awarded to the best Cornell graduate paper presented in those academic years a CorHaLi conference is held, and otherwise the best Cornell classics graduate essay or other conference paper given that academic year. We hope others will want to support this prize fund making it a long-term annual award in honor of Piero.
Fred Ahl Prize. The Department would also very much like to honor the extraordinary contribution of Fred Ahl over 52 years at Cornell. If possible, we would like to create a prize fund from which to award an annual Ahl Prize for undergraduate achievement - reflecting Fred's long involvement and achievements in teaching and enthusing undergraduates at Cornell with his love of literature and drama and so much else.
If you would like to make a gift towards either or both prize funds, and wish to do on-line, please use the donation link below or the QR code. PLEASE specify which (or both) Prize Fund you wish to give money to. Please do this EITHER in the "In Honor/Memory" section OR in the "Other Designation or Special Instructions" section. Of course, old-fashioned checks are also very welcome mailed to the Classics Department (made out to "Cornell University" and again clearly indicating your choice of purpose please). Thank you very much for all and any support to help sustain and to create these prizes in honor of Piero and Fred from all the Department!
Click here to make a contribution to the Pucci and/or Ahl Prize Funds.
The Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory identified the likeliest timeline of the Hellenistic-era ship's sinking as between 296-271 BCE, with a strong probability it occurred between 286-272 BCE.
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How to Get Over a Breakup is Michael Fontaine’s latest entry in a series that mines modern wisdom from classical works
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Coming from the University of Toronto, where he is the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Loewen begins his five-year appointment as the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Aug. 1.
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“This year’s Humanities Scholar Program conference was spectacular. The range of topics covered, the diversity of approaches, and the level of mastery demonstrated by the students were inspiring,” said interim director Lawrence Glickman.
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Kim Haines-Eitzen, the Paul and Berthe Hendrix Memorial Professor of Near Eastern studies, and Mostafa Minawi, associate professor of history and director of Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies, will pursue research projects in residence in Durham, North Carolina.
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Kim Montpelier is a classics and philosophy major.
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The collection “Households in Context: Dwelling in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt” shifts the archaeological perspective from public and elite spaces such as temples, tombs and palaces to everyday dwellings and interactions of families.
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Pietro (Piero) Pucci, an influential classical scholar who spent more than 50 years in the Department of Classics in the College of Arts and Sciences, died in Paris on April 7. He was 96.
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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.