Future of Classics Department uncertain
Alecks Kim
Issue date: 12/1/08 Section: Features
While the recession and its resultant budgetary issues hang over all of UIC, they may loom greatest over the Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is considering severe cuts to this department, which would result in the termination of its major in Latin and all instruction in Ancient Greek.
To cut costs, the College of LAS just last year had been forced to suspend the major in Italian, though Italian's faculty had shrunk to a point where the major would've been difficult to sustain. However, the classics program has stayed strong over the years with a full faculty of professors dedicated to this often-overlooked department and its students.
Created almost four decades ago by a few professors from the English department, UIC's classics curriculum is Chicago's only publicly funded college program in the classics. It is staffed by a regular faculty of PhDs, as there is no graduate program. As with all classics programs, classes are small compared to other areas of study, which has made it a prime target for cutbacks. Yet according to Professor Nanno Marinatos, Ancient Greek costs "very little to the university," as over half the classes have been taught since 1981 as "free overload" by professors on their own unpaid time.
Although this year has been a strong one for the department with the some of the highest enrollment sizes and the most majors it has ever seen, the department appears to have seen the need to revitalize its program. There are plans underfoot to stress the program's connection with Chicago's Greek community and to appeal to Greek-speaking students at UIC, to whom the difficult language of Ancient Greek would be more accessible. Most importantly, it will stress the academic and professional success that many classics majors attribute to their study of Latin and Greek.
Ancient Greek, for example, would be an invaluable asset to a student learning the philosophy of Plato, the poetry of Homer, or the theology of the New Testament, as many of the concepts in the original texts would be lost in translation. Marinatos says, "Greek is a highly conceptual language. And reading these authors in the original language is very rewarding for my students. They can appreciate its immense beauty and the tightness of its thought."
To cut costs, the College of LAS just last year had been forced to suspend the major in Italian, though Italian's faculty had shrunk to a point where the major would've been difficult to sustain. However, the classics program has stayed strong over the years with a full faculty of professors dedicated to this often-overlooked department and its students.
Created almost four decades ago by a few professors from the English department, UIC's classics curriculum is Chicago's only publicly funded college program in the classics. It is staffed by a regular faculty of PhDs, as there is no graduate program. As with all classics programs, classes are small compared to other areas of study, which has made it a prime target for cutbacks. Yet according to Professor Nanno Marinatos, Ancient Greek costs "very little to the university," as over half the classes have been taught since 1981 as "free overload" by professors on their own unpaid time.
Although this year has been a strong one for the department with the some of the highest enrollment sizes and the most majors it has ever seen, the department appears to have seen the need to revitalize its program. There are plans underfoot to stress the program's connection with Chicago's Greek community and to appeal to Greek-speaking students at UIC, to whom the difficult language of Ancient Greek would be more accessible. Most importantly, it will stress the academic and professional success that many classics majors attribute to their study of Latin and Greek.
Ancient Greek, for example, would be an invaluable asset to a student learning the philosophy of Plato, the poetry of Homer, or the theology of the New Testament, as many of the concepts in the original texts would be lost in translation. Marinatos says, "Greek is a highly conceptual language. And reading these authors in the original language is very rewarding for my students. They can appreciate its immense beauty and the tightness of its thought."
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