Should the study of 'the classics' be dismantled and rebuilt?

A question raised in the current issue of Brown Alumni Monthly.

"For 21st-century American proponents of the supremacy of 'white culture,' ancient Greece and Rome are revered as where it all started. That’s among the many reasons Princeton classics professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta, in an incendiary 2019 panel discussion, denounced his own field as engaging in the 'production of whiteness' and said he hopes classics, as currently constructed, 'dies as swiftly as possible.'

Since then, more and more scholars have been asking, should classics even proceed as a field? Does it need merely to be disrupted or should it be dismantled altogether, dispersed into the departments of history, archaeology, art history, and foreign languages? How can classics — a historically white, male, and elite field of study — be made more accessible?"

"Classics: Dead or Alive? A new course examines ancient Greece and Rome with a 21st-century lens." Peder Schaefer ’22. Brown Alumni Monthly. June–August 2022.