We love and support these initiatives led by Antiquity-scholars and invite you to check out what they’re up to.
We thank the folks at EOS and the AAACC for the idea and providing us with an initial list. All annotations are excerpts from the group’s homepage.
The Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus is a group of Asian and Asian American students and scholars of classical antiquity interested in studying the reception of the classical tradition in contemporary Asian and Asian American culture, and they are committed to increasing the diversity of the field of Classics.
We are a collective of archaeologists (from PhD students to faculty members) committed to the active support of archaeology students from working-class and historically looted communities who are both regularly excluded by traditional scholarship and academic programs, or who require more economic support than those resources cover.
The Classics and Social Justice group brings together scholars who are working in various ways on social justice, using Classics. This work brings Classics out of the academy and returns it to the least privileged in our society; this group seeks to draw together those trained in the field who are in some cases giving intellectual life-lines to those in difficult situations: the incarcerated, veterans, and children with least access to quality education.
Random thoughts of a Classicist on ancient Greek and Roman culture and contemporary America by Rebecca Futo Kennedy
The blog aggregates news about publications, activities, etc. related to Arabic scholarship in the field of Greco-Roman studies and thus seeks to challenge the Eurocentrism prevalent in the field. It aims also at directing the attention of my colleagues to relevant classics materials from modern nonacademic Egyptian contexts; roughly from 1798-to the present. The news comes mainly from Egypt without excluding other Arabic countries.
The Christian Cole Society was established by Classics students at the University of Oxford to provide a community and support network for BAME Classicists, and to advocate for diversity within this and related fields. Committed to decolonising Classics, we run lecture, seminar and discussion events open to all members of the University of Oxford, and take part in social media campaigns to engage the wider community and illustrate the importance of the representation of people from all backgrounds in education and academia.
CripAntiquity is an international advocacy organization for disabled and neurodiverse students, teachers, scholars, staff, artists, and writers in ancient studies. Our mission is to combat ableism by amplifying disabled and neurodiverse perspectives; creating resources that will empower individuals and transform institutions; and fostering community among our members.
Digital Hammurabi is a public outreach/digital humanities project/creative brainchild by Assyriologist Megan Lewis, who is ably assisted by a number of friends and colleagues. Our aim is to provide reliable, accurate information about the Ancient Near East (that’s modern Iraq and the surrounding area!) in an entertaining and engaging fashion.
Led by Alice Stevenson and Heba Abd el Gawad (University College of London), this AHRC funded project aims to amplify the voice, visibility, and validity of modern Egyptian communities in ancient Egyptian collections at UK museums. You can follow their work online here and on Twitter @excavatedegypt.
Eos exists to create a supportive, dedicated community for studying Africana receptions of ancient Greece and Rome and to foster collaborative research and pedagogy between Classics and other disciplines.
Faces & Voices is the blog of Roberta Mazza, lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Manchester.
Forging Antiquity is part of the ‘Markers of Authenticity’ research cluster within the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University. It takes on issues as diverse as authorial and creative practice; memory and cognition; cultural heritage; looting and the antiquities trade; forgery; the relationship between the academy and the public; the expert and the amateur; technique and motivation; performance and experience; natural and artificial environments; virtual worlds and the augmentation of the body and our senses.
Hesperides holds within its purview any scholarship that examines the diverse manifestations of Greco-Roman engagements across and between Iberian contact zones: the Mediterranean, the Americas, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and beyond. Additionally, the organization welcomes scholarship highlighting the contributions of those who have been overlooked in previous scholarship, such as indigenous, Afrodescendent, and female voices.
History from Below gathers musings on daily life in the ancient and early medieval Mediterranean by Sarah E. Bond.
Lambda Classical Caucus is a coalition of queer Classicists–including, but not limited to, lesbians, bisexuals, gay men, and transgendered people–and their friends and supporters. The LCC’s scholarly purpose is to promote research that reflects the personal and intellectual interests of queer scholars, and provide a bridge between Classics and the interdisciplinary fields of LGBT/Queer Studies, the history of sexuality, cultural studies, and gender theory.
The Mountaintop Coalition is composed of students and scholars of the ancient Mediterranean world and its reception (broadly defined) with a shared interest in advancing the professional goals of Classicists who identify as members of ethnic groups traditionally underrepresented in the field.
The Multiculturalism, Race & Ethnicity in Classics Consortium aims to raise awareness and support the study of multiculturalism, race, and ethnicity in classics and classical archaeology at all levels. For MRECC, multiculturalism, race, and ethnicity is central but intersectionality with gender, sexual orientation, and all matters of identity are welcome.
“Notes from the Apotheke” is intended to be three things:
- A resource for Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color studying, researching, teaching, or otherwise engaged with Classical Studies, archaeology, ancient history, egyptology, and related fields;
- A space for reaction to and reflection on my own experiences as a BIPOC graduate student in the field of Classical Studies; and
- A catalyst for building community among BIPOC in Classics that transcends academic and institutional affiliation, and even (maybe) the digital spaces most (but not all) of us frequent.
O pietas animi is the blog of Hannah Čulík-Baird, who is Classics professor at Boston University with a research specialization in fragments, fragmentary Latin poetry, Cicero.
Everyday stories from the ancient past by Jennifer Cromwell and an array of guest contributors.
Peopling the Past is a Digital Humanities initiative that hosts free, open-access resources for teaching and learning about real people in the ancient world and the people who study them.
Pharos is a platform where classical scholars, and the public more broadly, can learn about and respond to appropriations of Greco-Roman antiquity by hate groups online.
We are a group of Classics Graduate Students and Junior Faculty committed to making sure that students from working-class and historically looted communities (like the ones we ourselves come from) don’t fall through the cracks left by traditional scholarship programs; all too many of which have a poor understanding of what our lives are actually like and what we actually need.
We are a group of Classics Graduate Students and Junior Faculty committed to making sure that students from working-class and historically looted communities (like the ones we ourselves come from) don’t fall through the cracks left by traditional scholarship programs; all too many of which have a poor understanding of what our lives are actually like and what we actually need.
Women’s Classical Caucus fosters feminist and gender-informed perspectives, especially those with intersectional and global approaches, in the study and teaching of all aspects of ancient Mediterranean cultures and classical antiquity.
The Women’s Classical Committee was founded in 2015 in the United Kingdom with the following aims:
- Support women* in classics**
- Promote feminist and gender-informed perspectives in classics
- Raise the profile of the study of women in antiquity and classical reception
- Advance equality and diversity in classics
The rise of the “manel” (= all male panel) is prevalent within the field of ancient history. In order to combat this, Sarah E. Bond set up a crowd-sourced excel sheet so that a list of women in the field could be compiled and subsequently kept updated through the years. This list has no one author, but is rather a product of over 50+ women and men who took the time to contribute.
Everyday Orientalism 