The purpose of the group is to bring together those scholars in the
field who are working in various ways on social justice, using
Classics. This work is a form of outreach that brings Classics out of
the academy and returns it to the least privileged in our society; we
seek to draw together those trained in our field who are in some cases
giving intellectual life-lines to those in nearly hopeless situations:
the incarcerated, veterans, and children with least access to quality
education. Each of these has so many underexplored dimensions and is too
little visible at the SCS even though many individuals in the
discipline are doing such work. Our goal is to create a dialogue about
how Classicists and their students are using Classics, texts,
traditions, and receptions, to address problems of inequality–social,
educational, economic, etc.
The group members will discuss the practicalities of their programs
and the theoretical structures that could help individual practitioners
and expand our field’s interaction in the world outside of academia. We
envision addressing such questions as: Should we use our positions in
the academy as a springboard for activism? How do we include students
and still teach them? What kinds of engaged work helps us foster our
communities? How can we use art as an instrument of social justice?
The Committee sees these programs as continuing the work of opening
the Classics beyond the elite; at the same time, advancing the
discipline by showing the importance of a liberal education in the 21st
century: the role of Classics in these marginalized settings gives new
evidence of its value. By drawing into the field voices that have
previously not been part of it, Classics as a discipline stands to
benefit greatly. Invigorating new perspectives on Classical texts emerge
from this work outside the traditional classroom. Thus, our discussions
include the ways in which teaching outside the academy changes us as
educators and how we see our profession.
Many in the teaching professions are beginning to wonder how we can
call attention to the fundamental inequality between those who receive
an education and those who do not and the role that this inequality
plays in the problem of mass incarceration, and what we can do to help
mend this inequality. The work of a Committee on Classics and Social
Justice can advance that conversation and potentially rehabilitate our
field — by establishing real connections to the communities outside of
the academy in which Classics is very much alive and proving practically
useful — just as much as it considers how we as Classicists can offer
something to the rehabilitation of those in difficult life
circumstances.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
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