The Department of Classics is committed to fostering an inclusive environment that is welcoming to all. In our teaching and research we embrace the enormous diversity of the ancient world, with its multiplicity of peoples, languages, cultures, and religions. We recognize that the Classics have historically been used to justify ideologies of exclusion and inequality, but we vehemently oppose these uses in the present and are working actively to critique and combat such ideologies. The Department is committed to promoting greater diversity, equity, and inclusivity in the field as a whole. Some of the practical actions we are taking to achieve that end can be found below.
Bursaries, Awards, and Fellowships
Inclusive Language Study Award
To fund tutoring for promising students in our Ancient Greek and Latin courses.
Bursaries for Summer Greek and Latin Courses
To cover tuition for summer language study.
Diversity Fellowship
Two or four-year fellowship for outstanding MA or PhD students from groups traditionally underrepresented in Classics.
Lectures and Reading Groups
New Voices in Classics Lecture
This annual lecture aims to expand the boundaries of the discipline by amplifying both the voices of up-and-coming scholars in the field of Classics and ancient voices that are less often heard (including women, enslaved and colonized peoples, the socially or economically disadvantaged).
The inaugural lecture was given on February 11, 2022 by Mathura Umachandran of Cornell University.
Postcolonial Reading Group
This reading group aims to offer a space for members of the Department of Classics to come together to read key works in postcolonial thought and theory, and to explore and discuss the interactions between Greek and Roman antiquity and postcolonial contexts.
Eos READS for Black Lives Initiative
The Department of Classics is taking part in the Eos READS for Black Lives Initiative.
“As one step towards an anti-racist restructuring of our field and our communities, Eos challenges scholars, teachers, and students in Classics “to get down to the business of reading.” On Friday, October 16th, 2020, we will host a virtual extraordinary session of READS. In keeping with previous sessions, this workshop will gather Eos members to discuss selections of seminal African diasporic texts. We have chosen selections from “Concerning Violence” in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Margo Hendricks’ “Coloring the Past, Rewriting Our Future: RaceB4Race” (2019).
But this moment demands more. And so, we have added a new element to this iteration of READS. To attend the workshop, you must organize and participate in a discussion of these texts in your campus or community first. The special session of READS on October 16th will dedicate time to group discussion of the texts, to reflections on our conversations across our communities, and to considering this experiment and the historicity of these protests for Black lives.”
For information on the UofT Classics chapter of this initiative, please contact Katherine Blouin.
Other Links
- Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus
- Black-Centred Resources for Ancient Mediterranean Studies
- Classics and Social Justice
- Classical Association of Canada resources relating to Black Lives Matter
- Classics at the Intersections
- Eidolon
- Eos Africana Receptions of Ancient Greece and Rome
- Everyday Orientalism
- History from Below
- Lambda Classical Caucus: A Coalition of Queer Classicists and Allies
- The Mountaintop Coalition
- Multiculturalism, Race and Ethnicity in Classics Consortium
- The Sportula: Microgrants for Classics Students
- The Women’s Classical Caucus
- Women’s Network of the Classical Association of Canada