The Classics Department offers several major programs.

Haverford/Bryn Mawr major in Classical Culture & Society

This major is intended for students with a broad interest in the ancient Greco-Roman world.  It is designed to allow the student to use a strong foundation in Greek or Latin as the springboard for a focused study of the culture and society of classical antiquity, concentrating in one of the following areas: archaeology and art history, philosophy and religion, literature and the classical tradition, history and society.  Majors in Classical Culture and Society join the other departmental majors in the Senior Seminar; here they gain an acquaintance with several current issues and approaches in the field, learn about research techniques and resources, and have an opportunity to carry out original research on a topic of their choice under the supervision of the appropriate member of the Haverford or Bryn Mawr department.

Requirements:

• Two semesters of either Latin or Greek beyond the introductory level.
• One course in Greek or Roman history.
• Three courses, at least two of which must be at the 200 level or above, in an area of concentration (archaeology and art history, history and society, literature and the classical tradition, philosophy and religion).
• Three electives in classical studies, at least one of them (except in the case of History and Society concentrators) drawn from courses in History and Society.
• Senior Seminar (398a/399b).

Classical Languages

The major in Classical Languages is designed to give students a solid grounding in both Greek and Latin and to introduce them to a variety of texts and genres studied in relation to their literary, historical, and philosophical contexts.  In the Senior Seminar they gain an acquaintance with several current issues and approaches in the field, learn about research techniques and resources, and have an opportunity to carry out original research on a topic of their choice under the supervision of the appropriate member of the Haverford or Bryn Mawr department.

Requirements:

• Eight courses beyond the elementary level divided between Greek and Latin, at least two courses in each language must be at the 200 level or above. Equivalent courses may be taken at Bryn Mawr College.
• Senior Seminar (398a/399b).

Greek or Latin

Students who major in Greek or Latin pursue an intensive curriculum in one of the two languages, and in addition do work at the advanced level in an allied field (which might itself be Classical Studies, but might also be English or another language, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Religion, History, Art History, Archaeology, Music –indeed, almost any discipline the student can make a case for).  The reason for this is twofold. (1) We want to recognize the fact that Greek and Latin are of importance not only to those whose central interest is in the ancient world but to those working in a variety of disciplines or at a variety of periods in which knowledge of these languages has played a part.  (2) We think it’s helpful for students in Classics to get a strong sense of a particular discipline and its approach.  In the Senior Seminar they gain an acquaintance with several current issues and approaches in the field, learn about research techniques and resources, and have an opportunity to carry out original research on a topic of their choice under the supervision of the appropriate member of the Haverford or Bryn Mawr department.

Requirements:

• Six semester courses beyond the elementary level in one ancient language, of which at least four must be at the 200 level or above.
• A minimum of three semester courses beyond the introductory level in a related field (another language, Archaeology, Comparative Literature, English, History, Religion, Philosophy). Equivalent courses may be taken at Bryn Mawr College.
• Senior Seminar (398a/399b).

Archaeology

Students may major in Archaeology through Bryn Mawr's Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology.

Senior Seminar

The fall semester of the seniorseminar is a joint Haverford/Bryn Mawr course, team-taught to majors at both Haverford and Bryn Mawr; it addresses a selection of the diverse topics and approaches involved in classical studies. One faculty member runs the seminar, and three others teach three-week segments on topics chosen by the students from a list of offerings. (Examples of recent topics: Athenian law; everyday Greek life in words and pictures; ancient magic; Roman coins; Greek and Roman views on exploration and other peoples; the creative afterlife of ancient myth; the art of translation; twentieth century women writers and the classics.) Students give short presentations on these topics and write a final paper in preparation for their senior thesis. In the spring semester of the senior seminar, students write a senior thesis on a topic of their choice.

Requirements for Honors

Thoughts on Learning Classics...

"All the more strange, then, is it that we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn back to Greek, and be forever making up some notion of the meaning of Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say?" — Virginia Woolf

"I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a Treat." — Sir Winston Churchill

"It took Latin to thrust me into bona fide alliance with words in their true meaning. Learning Latin...fed my love for words upon words, words in continuation and modification, and the beautiful accretion of a sentence...." — Eudora Welty

"It allows you to adore words, take them apart and find out where they came from." — Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

"I continue to keep myself busy with Greek and Latin, and perhaps I'll always keep myself busy with them. I love the perfume of those beautiful languages; Tacitus is for me like bronze bas-reliefs, and Homer is beautiful like the Mediterranean: both have the same pure blue waves, the same sun, and the same horizon." — Gustave Flaubert

"Latin is the first subject we do in life entirely for its own sake. A degree at university in Classics leads to almost any job in the world. It gives one a disinterestedness in the study of any subject. Disinterestedness is NOT being uninterested. Quite the opposite: it is a love of studying without any practical result intended - and it gives the soul a peace, an inner control, a quiet joy beyond words."

"Only those languages can properly be called dead in which nothing living has been written. If the classic languages are dead, they yet speak to us, and with a clearer voice than that of any living tongue. - James Russell

“Philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow — it is a goldsmith’s art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today; by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of “work” that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to “get everything done” at once, including every old or new book: — this art does not easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate fingers and eyes.” — Nietzsche, Daybreak 1881

"We are all Greeks! Our laws, our literature, our art, have their roots in Greece." — Percy Bysshe Shelley

"One of the regrets of my life is that I did not study Latin. I'm absolutely convinced, the more I understand these eighteenth-century people, that it was that grounding in Greek and Latin that gave them their sense of the classic virtues:the classic ideals of honor, virtue, the good society and their historic examples of what they could try to live up to." — David McCullough, Historian and author

There's a reason why ancient Greece is one of the only grade-school social studies subjects that any of us remembers: Greek gods are freakin' cool. — Steve Tilley