Our discipline profile:

Classics is the study of the languages and cultures of the ancient Greco-Roman world and their continuing impact since antiquity.

As Classicists, we use and evaluate diverse bodies of evidence by means of our own subdisciplines and in dialogue with other fields and methodologies. On this foundation, we investigate the past, as well as its complex relationship with the present. Students and scholars use the skills acquired through the study of the classics to communicate effectively and engage meaningfully and creatively with the modern world.

Competencies: our goal is for students to acquire the following competencies through their coursework and in their time in our program, whether it be as a major, minor or even in a few courses.

1. Knowledge and evidence: Acquisition and communication of knowledge about the ancient Greco-Roman world through the use and critical evaluation of diverse bodies of evidence

1. Content:
   1. Systematic knowledge of Latin, Greek, and English grammar and syntax
   2. Ability to read and produce Greek and/or Latin
   3. Basic knowledge of cultural products and practices within a geographical and chronological framework
2. Analytical skills:
   1. Ability to read and analyze a broad variety of ancient texts (in the original and in translation)
   2. Ability to recognize subject, purpose, argument, genre, and bias in texts
   3. Ability to examine, contextualize, and interpret ancient material culture (as primary texts)
   4. Extrapolating meaningful information from fragmentary and limited evidence
   5. Ability to construct, situate, or position one's own argument within a larger discourse, whether scholarly or popular
   6. Understand and evaluate argumentation and secondary sources
3. Metacognition:
   1. Awareness of, and ability to position and communicate, one's own intellectual process, strengths, and weaknesses in analyzing ancient sources of evidence
   2. Critique and revise one's own ideas in light of new evidence

2. Interdisciplinarity: Integration of subdisciplines and other fields (e.g. philology, archaeology, art history, anthropology, history, philosophy, religion, linguistics, political science, economics, geology, ethnic studies, gender studies, performance studies) and their methodologies

1. Ability to use interdisciplinary approaches to connect texts and artifacts to their cultural contexts
2. Integrating and contextualizing fragmentary evidence
3. Recognizing what types of evidence and methodologies are applicable to a particular question
4. Ability to use more than one kind of evidence, body of knowledge, and/or mode of thinking to answer questions
5. Perceive and organize patterns of evidence across history, across subdisciplines, between methodologies
6. Understanding complexities and limitations of various bodies of evidence and methodologies

3. Comparing past and present: Understanding the complex relationship between past and present

1. Recognition of modes of thinking that still inform today's discourse (e.g. anthropology, political and forensic oratory, drama, philosophy, history)
2. Awareness of resonances between the ancient world and subsequent cultural productions
3. Investigating how various historical moments affect the reception of antiquity
4. Critical evaluation of our understanding of the past as a creative process informed by a reading of the evidence and our own historical moment
5. Understanding the use of the past in imagining the future

4. Intercultural Literacy: Meaningful and creative engagement with multiple perspectives, including those with which one does not agree

1. Be able to think from the perspective of a different value system
2. Recognize privileged and non-privileged ideologies
3. Imagine different quotidian experiences and different social norms
4. Negotiate complex issues and ambiguity

This document has been produced by Classicists from across the Associated Colleges of the Midwest at a workshop organized by Professor Thakur and Professors Hardy (Carleton), Gruber-Miller (Cornell), Walsh (Beloit), and Ziskowski (Coe).