Studying the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds at Berkeley

The department teaches and studies the languages, cultures, histories, philosophies, literatures, art, and material culture of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. It is home to exciting and welcoming undergraduate major programs and maintains a rich and varied schedule of undergraduate courses, including a full curriculum of ancient Greek and Latin language instruction. Its PhD programs in Classics and Classical Archaeology are enriched every year by the arrival of new future leaders in the study of the ancient world, and for generations their graduates have gone on to renew or remake their fields. Itself a teeming center of intellectual vitality on campus, the department is affiliated with internationally important research units directed by its faculty, including the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, the Sara B. Aleshire Center for Greek Epigraphy, and the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology. The department organizes many events of interest and hosts many visits, most notably the storied annual Jane K. Sather Professorship of Classical Literature.


Featured Courses


Fall 2023
Madolyn Hyytiainen-Jacobson

Fall 2023
Shelton, Kim

An introduction to the ancient civilizations of the Bronze Age (3000-1100 BCE) Aegean: Crete, the Cyclades, Mainland Greece, and Western Anatolia. The still enigmatic remains of palaces, burials, paintings, and precious objects are explored in terms of their cultural contexts. 

News

The Department reports with sorrow that Robert Knapp, Emeritus Professor of Classics and of Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, passed away on Sunday, 17 September 2023. More information will be posted here in the days to come.


The Department has been authorized to search for a scholar of Greek literature at the level of assistant or associate professor. For full details and to apply, please follow this link.


The faculty of the Department is delighted to welcome in Fall 2023 its new member, Prof. Grace Erny. An expert in the archaeology of Greece and the Mediterranean world in the first millennium BCE, Erny received her PhD from the Department of Classics at Stanford with a dissertation entitled “Landscapes of Inequality: Social Differentiation in Geometric through Classical Crete.” Erny arrives in Berkeley after a postdoctoral year in Athens; this fall, she will be teaching AGRS 17A: "Introduction to the Archaeology of the Ancient Greek World."

Events

Sep
28
2023

Victoria Wohl (Toronto), 2023-24 Sather Professor of Classical Literature, presents the second lecture of her series "The Poetry of Being and the Prose of the World in Early Greek Philosophy."

Oct
3
2023

Sponsored by the Joint Graduate Program in Ancient Philosophy

Oct
5
2023

Victoria Wohl (Toronto), 2023-24 Sather Professor of Classical Literature, presents the third lecture of her series "The Poetry of Being and the Prose of the World in Early Greek Philosophy."

Oct
6
2023

A one-day conference on elemental aesthetics and politics in Classics and the Humanities as a whole.

Oct
12
2023

Victoria Wohl (Toronto), 2023-24 Sather Professor of Classical Literature, presents the fourth lecture of her series "The Poetry of Being and the Prose of the World in Early Greek Philosophy."

 


Fall 2023 Sather Lectures

Sather 2023 poster