Classics

[marshwiggle]

Wouldn't this be the case anywhere? (At least as regards the "Euro-centric" part.) For instance, in a Chinese university course on ancient Greece and Rome, wouldn't they frame it in terms of how it related to China? Wouldn't an Indian university frame it in terms of how it relates to India?

Yes, except, if we're talking about the US or Canadian systems, we're not in Europe. In the ancient Americas, the Olmec developed hieroglyphs in the 7th century BCE and the Maya were using a developed script by at least the 3rd century BCE. I'm not as knowledgeable about the Americas, but the Maya were working with luxury materials like jade and gold, building immense temple complexes and had a complex system of city-states similar to ancient Greece. The Moche (Peru) did not leave a written record, but they discovered the process of electrochemical plating for their metalwork around 500 CE (maybe earlier?) and in general their metal-working techniques are considered to have been far more advanced than those in Europe (or Asia or Africa). 

If we're going to be geographically biased, let's bias towards our actual geography, not to a culture we've tried to impose upon our geography.

But it's not primarily about geography, it's about influence. In  North America, we get a lot of European history, particularly up to the 1600-1700s or so. I wouldn't be surprised that they get much less North American history, even of the past 200-300 years. This reflects the way the influence has run. Our culture is much more a product of European culture than the other way around. So had the Mayans and other American cultures had a significant effect on our culture, I'd expect them to play a bigger part in our education. (For that reason, I'd expect them to play a bigger part in Mexican history, since there will be more cultural descent there.)

[Parasaurolophus]

The Haudenosaunee had a pretty big influence on the development of the American state, but good luck learning about it in a civics or American history course. (Good luck learning about the role of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in precipitating the American Revolution, too).

Influence matters, sure, but it gets buried pretty quickly when it's inconvenient. If you insist on it, you'll find it's not a very objective measure.

[artalot]

Also, the influence of ancient Rome is due to the way education was and continues to be organized in the US and Canada. If every student were required to study indigenous American histories in elementary and high school and our idea of the Classics included the Maya and Moche, we might be having a different conversation.

[mamselle]

And, as an art historian, no, objects are not employed to illustrate texts. Objects are primary sources in and of themselves that can tell us about the past. Objects are, in many cases better than texts, as they can tell us about cultures that left behind little/no written record. The Romans were very sketchy on where, exactly, China was (the Chinese were pretty clear on Rome and its vassal states), but objects tell us a lot about contact between these empires.

An Indian statuette was found in ruins at Pompeii and Roman coins have been found in India and China. The Romans loved Chinese silk and the Chinese prized Roman glass. We have found Song dynasty porcelain in sub-Saharan Africa, and any gold you see in Roman or ancient/medieval European art comes from gold fields in West Africa.

Thank you, artalot.

Exactly what I was trying to say, much better put.

M.

[pgher]

I'm not a big defender of department of Classics. But is it anachronistic that they don't study Asian culture? There are departments of East Asian Studies, which include courses on ancient cultures. Some places have departments of South Asian Studies. And there are departments of Near or Middle Eastern Studies. We might worry that Asian culture doesn't get studied enough.  But if Classics is implicitly the study of ancient Mediterranean and Western Asian culture, isn't a good deal of the world map then covered?

There is the question of whether these departments are thriving in the modern university. We already know that Classics is gradually fading away. I'm not sure how those other other areas of study are doing.

The bolded part is a key problem with the field. Calling Greek and Roman culture "Classic" and other cultures "ancient" is inherently a value judgment. My kid who is part of a decolonization student group would take serious issue with elevating the so-called Classic cultures to the exclusion of others. It's a short walk from "Greek and Roman culture in antiquity is more worthy of study than Chinese culture in antiquity" to "white Europeans are superior to Chinese people." (Or insert your favorite geographic region.) And indeed, the study of Classics has been exploited by white supremacists.

[quasihumanist]

Under conditions of scarcity, everything is fair and nothing is fair.

Frankly, it wouldn't actually take that much funding to maintain healthy scholarly communities studying ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and so on.

Since there isn't even that much in the way of resources, the study of different ancient civilizations is pitted against each other.

[downer]

If people don't like the name Classics, call it something else. Hurry before all the departments have closed.

But have you read recent scholarship in the field? Is this worry about the supposed assumptions of the superiority of Greco-Roman culture based on anything more than the name?

I was watching Cornel West defend the study of the classics recently. He's not a guy to assume that European cultures are the best, yet he still thought it's important work. Here's his piece for the WP on the topic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/19/cornel-west-howard-classics/

[hungry_ghost]

Responding to a lot of different points:

My understanding is that such stuff falls under history/archeology/biology departments, while classicists  study texts.

From what I have seen, strong "Classics" departments are interdisciplinary and are not limited to textual studies, but also include history (which makes use of the material record as well as the textual record), art history, archaeology, religious studies, etc.

Most ancient studies scholars (including those who study Mesopotamia, India, China, and MesoAmerica) have a primary focus but are able to draw on all of these disciplines.

Do texts remain from the Asian cultures that were invaded by Greece or Rome, that identify those armies as Barbarian?

This is an interesting question. You mean like Alexander the Great's invasion of India? I believe that is documented in Indian sources but I cannot read them and I do not know how they are identified or whether a term like "barbarian" is used. I cannot think of other examples offhand. Anyone?

If we're talking about a textual record, ancient Chinese philosophers and historians left behind a voluminous textual record, but Chinese is not included amongst classical languages. Ditto for ancient India (Sanskrit texts date to as early as c. 1500 BCE). There are several known written languages in ancient Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ge'ez from Ethiopia/Eritrea, which we see as early as the 9th century BCE.

Uh ... what?!
If you mean that Sanskrit and Chinese are not included in "Classics" departments, you are correct; nor for that matter are Sumerian, Akkadian, Persian, Hebrew, Classical Arabic, etc. Note too, Classical Chinese is a different language from modern Chinese, just as Latin differs from modern Italian.
I suspect that you do not mean that these languages are not classical languages by any definition--but in case anyone is thinking that, I beg to differ. Each of these languages is connected to a major ancient world literary tradition as significant as (and in some cases with longer histories than) the tradition taught in Classics departments. So some of us would say that they ARE classical languages.   

This leads to a brilliant idea --  a course in Comparative Classical Empires! :-)

This is a great idea!

I'm not a big defender of department of Classics. But is it anachronistic that they don't study Asian culture? There are departments of East Asian Studies, which include courses on ancient cultures. 

For the record, I actually am a strong supporter of all ancient studies. I take no issue with a Classics department that does not teach Asian cultures. But bear in mind, East Asian Studies programs often cover ancient and modern East Asia, whereas Classics departments are devoted to the ancient history, literature, and culture of Greece and Rome; they don't also teach conversational Italian, film studies, etc. Do they even make it to Dante? So these are not parallel cases.

If people don't like the name Classics, call it something else. Hurry before all the departments have closed.

But have you read recent scholarship in the field? Is this worry about the supposed assumptions of the superiority of Greco-Roman culture based on anything more than the name?

Well well well, and we're back to my earlier post. A Classics department decided that they needed to give their major a different name! And, what they came up with puts their "supposed assumptions of the superiority of Greco-Roman culture" on full display: they called their major "Ancient Civilization." What I find offensive in the extreme (and racist too, in case anyone is still reading) is a Classics department with a major called "Ancient Civilization" (singular) that excludes everything but Greece and Rome. 

And yes, I have read recent scholarship in the field, and I can tell you that some Classics scholars find this every bit as appalling as I do, but others actually do not understand why a class called "Women of the Ancient World" that excludes women from anywhere but Greece and Rome is offensive.

[pgher]

If people don't like the name Classics, call it something else. Hurry before all the departments have closed.

But have you read recent scholarship in the field? Is this worry about the supposed assumptions of the superiority of Greco-Roman culture based on anything more than the name?

I was watching Cornel West defend the study of the classics recently. He's not a guy to assume that European cultures are the best, yet he still thought it's important work. Here's his piece for the WP on the topic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/19/cornel-west-howard-classics/

I haven't read recent scholarship myself (I'm an engineer), but my kid, who is studying archaeology, is repulsed by the inane work that he sees coming out of his university's Classics department--so focused on Greco-Roman history that there's nothing interesting to say any more. He took a Roman archaeology class that was cross-listed, but he said that all of the interesting work on that time period and region is happening outside the Classics department (in archaeology or anthropology or whatever). Of course, he's just a damn kid, so what does he know?

[downer]

Boris Johnson studied classics at Oxford.
https://twitter.com/LettersOfNote/status/1481249952135327748/photo/1

[Hibush]

Boris Johnson studied classics at Oxford.
https://twitter.com/LettersOfNote/status/1481249952135327748/photo/1

Yes, Prof. Bothwell is correct to note the importance of distinguishing a person's training from their inherent personality.

[dismalist]

Apparently, western classics studies are flourishing in China.

Across all my interviews ... no one saw a Classical education as irrevocably "Western"; it was as if the Greeks and Romans were a heritage of global culture, a wellspring of wisdom that remains relevant to all moderns regardless of hemisphere.

https://supchina.com/2022/01/13/china-looks-to-the-western-classics/

[Hibush]

Apparently, western classics studies are flourishing in China.

Across all my interviews ... no one saw a Classical education as irrevocably "Western"; it was as if the Greeks and Romans were a heritage of global culture, a wellspring of wisdom that remains relevant to all moderns regardless of hemisphere.

https://supchina.com/2022/01/13/china-looks-to-the-western-classics/

Very intersting article!  The faculty market may be stronger at Chinese universities than US ones. How many US PhDs are applying? On the one hand, the article describes Chinese students who got a classics degree in the US and then found positions in China. But on the other, the most prominent classics professor the speaks Mandarin, Greek and Latin with a distinct Austrian accent.

One benefit of conversing in ancient Greek: the censors leave you alone.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

Apparently, western classics studies are flourishing in China.

Across all my interviews ... no one saw a Classical education as irrevocably "Western"; it was as if the Greeks and Romans were a heritage of global culture, a wellspring of wisdom that remains relevant to all moderns regardless of hemisphere.

https://supchina.com/2022/01/13/china-looks-to-the-western-classics/

Very intersting article!  The faculty market may be stronger at Chinese universities than US ones. How many US PhDs are applying? On the one hand, the article describes Chinese students who got a classics degree in the US and then found positions in China. But on the other, the most prominent classics professor the speaks Mandarin, Greek and Latin with a distinct Austrian accent.

One benefit of conversing in ancient Greek: the censors leave you alone.

The article leaves unspoken the notion that scholars in China would be exposed to both "western" and contemporary Chinese sources, as well as to a very different historical context - a situation very different from most home-grown US scholars (as evidenced by the "ancient civilizations"-related discussion earlier in this thread. This makes me think that most stereotypical US PhDs will not be competitive in this situation.

[hungry_ghost]

The article leaves unspoken the notion that scholars in China would be exposed to both "western" and contemporary Chinese sources, as well as to a very different historical context - a situation very different from most home-grown US scholars (as evidenced by the "ancient civilization"-related discussion earlier in this thread. This makes me think that most stereotypical US PhDs will not be competitive in this situation.

Fixed that for you.
Ancient civilization = just one. Not plural.
China = not Greece, not Rome = barbarian.