Whose Classics? Race and Classical Antiquity in the U.S.

Perceived as the privileged inheritance of white European (and later, American) culture, Classics has long been entangled with whiteness. We will examine this issue by flipping the script and decentering whiteness, focusing instead on marginalized communities of color that have been challenging their historic exclusion from classics. We will read classical works and their modern retellings by Black, Indigenous, Chicanx and Asian American intellectual leaders and explore how they critique classics' relationship to racism, nationalism, settler colonialism and imperialism. Readings include Sophocles' Oedipus Rex alongside Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth, Euripides' Medea alongside Luis Alfaro's Mojada, Sophocles' Antigone alongside Beth Piatote's Antíkone, and the selections from the Homeric Odyssey alongside Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds.