Classics

Associate Professor Benjamin Keim, department chair

Professors McKirahan, Wolf, Biornlie (CM)²
Associate Professors Chinn, Keim, Berenfeld (PZ), Roselli (SC)
Visiting Assistant Professor Valentine
Cynthia Madrigal, academic coordinator

The Classics Department offers a major and a minor in Classics and a major and a minor in Late Antique-Medieval Studies (LAMS).

Classics is the study of the ancient Mediterranean world, a world that extended far beyond mainland Greece and Italy to encompass the Near East, North Africa, and Western Europe. The study of the Greco-Roman Classics was the original liberal arts curriculum and is the original interdisciplinary scholarly endeavor. Classicists are trained in the ancient languages as well as textual and literary criticism, history, archaeology, religion and philosophy. The study of ancient Greek and Latin constitutes the foundation of an education in the Classics. These two “dead” languages provide the medium through which Western literature, history, science, mathematics and philosophy were originally formulated. The material record of the ancient Mediterranean is equally rich and, provides insights into the origins of, among other things, religious ritual and urban life.

Late Antique-Medieval Studies (LAMS) is dedicated to a deeper understanding of the greater Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Like Classics, LAMS is multi-disciplinary, Mediterranean-focused, and grounded in the original languages, but LAMS picks up where Classics traditionally leaves off, examining the history and culture of the Greek, Latin, and Arabic heirs to the Roman and Persian empires up into the seventeenth century. As a result, LAMS provides the “big picture” for the rise of Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam, as well as for the ways in which these traditions processed the Hellenistic, Roman, Persian, and Germanic legacies. LAMS students have the opportunity to explore these fertile cultural encounters from a multi-disciplinary perspective with appropriate attention to the original languages, in particular, Greek, Latin, and Arabic.

Classics and LAMS are both cooperative intercollegiate programs. Classics and LAMS courses taught at any of The Claremont Colleges count as Pomona courses. Greek, Latin, Arabic and Classical Hebrew (when offered) may be taken to fulfill the Pomona College foreign language requirement. Courses taken on the Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) grading basis may not be counted toward either major or the minor except for courses which are only offered on the P/NP grading basis.

• Classics Major
    
• Classics Minor
    
• Classics Courses
    
• Late Antique-Medieval Studies Major
    
• Late Antique-Medieval Studies Minor
    
• Late Antique-Medieval Studies Courses
     

Read more about our learning objectives:
www.pomona.edu/administration/academic-dean/learning-objectives