Classical Languages and Civilizations

The M.A. in Classics and Ph.D. in Classics programs have been placed on hiatus and will not be accepting applications at this time.

The Graduate Program in Classics at Fordham University offers a broad range of courses in the languages, literatures, and history of Greece and Rome, and in the literature of the medieval period. Fordham University is also a member of a Graduate Classics Consortium with the City University of New York (CUNY) and New York University (NYU), in which each institution offers a number of graduate courses each semester. This arrangement enables graduate students to choose from a wider variety of course offerings each semester, use the libraries of the other universities, and consult with their faculty.

For more information about the graduate programs in the Classical Languages and Literature department, please visit our page on the Fordham website. More information is also available in our Student Handbook.

The M.A. in Classics and Ph.D. in Classics programs have been placed on hiatus and will not be accepting applications at this time.

All students, including those aspiring to the Ph.D., are initially admitted to M.A. candidacy. Students become Ph.D. candidates upon completing the M.A. course work and receiving the approval of the Department to continue their studies. Students may choose or be advised to terminate their degree with an M.A. degree. College-level proficiency in Greek and Latin is expected for admission to the M.A. and Ph.D. programs. Students applying for the Ph.D. in medieval Latin need not have college-level proficiency in ancient Greek.

Applications seeking an M.A. and/or Ph.D. in classics must submit the following:

Resume

Up to two pages in length (submitted electronically via the online application)

Official Transcripts

Official degree transcripts confirming prior degree conferral should be ordered at least one month prior to the application deadline. Please ensure that they are sent directly to the Office of Admissions via secure electronic delivery. If electronic delivery is not available, please request that your transcripts be submitted directly via post, in a sealed envelope, to: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Office of Admissions, Fordham University, 441 E. Fordham Rd., Bronx, NY 10458. Please note: you may upload unofficial copies of your transcripts to your application while the Office of Admissions awaits receipt of your official transcripts.

Official GRE Scores

should be sent directly by the testing service to the Office of Graduate Admissions, Fordham University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences – Code  #2259)

Statement of intent

Up to 500 words, submitted electronically, via the online application.
Describe your interest in the program, what you hope to gain personally and professionally from the program, and your commitment to the field. Please highlight relevant professional, personal, and academic experience (submit via the online application).

Writing Sample

5 - 20 pages in length, submitted electronically, via the online application

Three letters of recommendation

submitted directly by referees via the online application

English Proficiency

International applicants whose native language is not English are required to complete and submit to GSAS prior to matriculation their official scores from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). GSAS will also consider a student’s International English Language Testing System (IELTS)—Cambridge English Proficiency Level language testing results.

Official TOEFL or IELTS scores should be sent directly by the testing service to the Office of Graduate Admissions, Fordham University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences – Code # 2259.


 

For more information about admissions to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, please visit their page on the Fordham website.

The M.A. in Classics and Ph.D. in Classics programs have been placed on hiatus and will not be accepting applications at this time.

  • Classics (M.A.)
    • Latin Concentration
    • Greek Concentration
    • Greek & Latin Concentration
  • Classics (Ph.D.)
    • Classical Philology
      • Latin Major & Greek Minor
      • Greek Major & Latin Minor
    • Medieval Latin

CLAS 5050. World of Late Antiquity: Introduction to History, Art, and Culture. (4 Credits)

This course offers an introduction to the history, art, and culture of the Late Antique world from the third to the sixth century. We will explore the older narratives of decline in this period alongside powerful alternatives proposed by scholars more recently, drawing on both primary sources and monuments and critically examining the secondary literature that studies them. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: MVST.

CLAS 6400. Matter and Gender in Classical Antiquity. (3 Credits)

In the face of the rising popularity of "new materialisms," this class examines the emergence of the notion of "matter" in classical antiquity. We will undertake close readings of key ancient primary texts, including various Presocratics; Plato's Timaeus; Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, and Generation of Animals; and Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, tracing the discourses of materiality that arise in concert with tropes of sex and gender. The guiding question here is: What can matter's genealogical ties to the feminine tell us about the materialization of bodies and genders? At the same time, we will attend to the topographies and texture of ancient thinking about nature and materiality more broadly. Alongside a narrative of "emergence" we will also consider hermeneutic questions: What are the ethico-political stakes of "retrieval" of antiquity and how can we determine our relationship to these distant texts? And how does a consideration of ancient modes of thought help to enrich contemporary discourses of matter and gender? To help orient our study we will draw on contemporary thinkers including Irigaray, Kristeva, Loraux, Sallis, Caverero, as well as critically engaging Bachofen's 19th century conception of Mutterrecht. Some background knowledge of psychoanalytic theory is advised, as is knowledge of Greek, however all readings will be in translation.

CLAS 6466. Late Latin Poetry. (3 Credits)

A survey of late- antique Latin poetry, in particular Claudian, Ausonius, Rutilius, and the Centones.

CLAS 6535. Introduction to Digital Literary Studies. (3 Credits)

This graduate seminar introduces students to the digital tools, resources, and methods used in producing publishable data-driven scholarship in classical philology and literary criticism. The course provides a forum for students to develop hands-on skills in computer programming for literary studies (using Python), focused primarily on string manipulation, text mining and analysis, and data visualization, and with a strong emphasis on research design, reproducibility and replicability, and changing modes of scholarly communication in the Humanities. The course culminates in a series of Digital Classics "case studies," through which students will be invited to use the skills acquired in the course to reproduce landmark data-driven studies in Classics by N. A. Greenberg, D. Packard, D. Clayman, and the Tesserae Project, among others. The course is open to students with no prior programming experience. While the case studies will be drawn largely from scholarship in Classics, the training acquired in the class will be useful to any GSAS student at Fordham working with digitized corpora and textual data. Moreover, students will have the opportunity to work on material in Latin, Ancient Greek, English, and/or, with the permission of the instructor, another language of their own choosing.

CLAS 7000. Latin Survey at NYU. (3 Credits)

A survey of Latin literature offered by NYU.

CLAS 7440. The City of Rome: The Archaeology, History, and Topography of an Imperial City. (3 Credits)

Topics in Roman Art and Archaeology: The City of Rome: The Archaeology, History, and Topography of an Imperial City (at CUNY)

CLAS 7556. Island Archaeology. (3 Credits)

This graduate seminar focuses on the practice of classical archaeology on Mediterranean island sites.

CLAS 7580. The Trajanic Moment. (3 Credits)

This course explores the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan from a variety of different perspectives.

CLAS 7800. Greek Orators. (3 Credits)

In this course, students will read one or more examples of oratorical works from Classical Athens in the original Greek. We will also read extensively from other ancient sources in translation and from a broad range of modern scholarship on Athenian oratory to examine the different types and purposes of oratory in Athens, as well as the social, historical, legal, and cultural milieux in which such speeches were transmitted.

CLAS 7999. Proseminar: Classics as a Profession, Methods and Ethics.. (3 Credits)

This weekly seminar invites participants to think deeply and critically about the breadth of the field of classics and how both personal and shared ethics intersect with our methods and approaches. A sample of possible weekly topics includes: (1) What is Classics? What’s wrong with “Western Civ”?; (2) Our Disciplinary Histories; (3) Race, Ethnicity, and Reception Studies; (4) Gender, Politics, and Classics; (5) Sexualities, Then and Now; (6) Disability Studies, Trauma Awareness, and Accessibility; (7) Intersections Between Religions and Classics; (8) Material Culture and Cultural Heritage; (9) Papyrology and its Ethical Questions; (10) Numismatics and its Ethical Questions; (11) The Evolving Field of Language Teaching and Language Textbooks; (12) Demystifying Peer-Review and Role of Public Scholarship in the 21st Century; (13) Researching in Community: Grants, Large Projects, and the Ethics of Professional Collaboration and Interactions. Throughout the course, we will return repeatedly to the question of how to cultivate healthy mentee/mentor relationships and peer-to-peer support systems. Alternate weekly topics may be developed in collaboration with enrolled students. The seminar will have a limited number of guest participants, but will emphasize discussion of pre-circulated readings, over lecture-style presentations. Students will have wide latitude in developing a final project appropriate to their individual career goals. This might be a traditional term paper, or could include such projects as developing future class curriculum, preparing a grant proposal or fellowship application, creating sample job market materials, writing abstracts for submission to various conferences, or preparing a previous term paper for submission to a journal for peer-review.

CLAS 8802. Ecphrasis. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8803. Education in Greece and Rome. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8804. Greece and the Med in the Archaic and Classical Periods: Materials Methods and Debates. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8806. Homer's Iliad at CUNY. (3 Credits)

Classic Consortium.

CLAS 8807. Homer's Odyssey. (3 Credits)

This course offers an in-depth study of the Odyssey.

CLAS 8811. Pindar. (3 Credits)

At CUNY.

CLAS 8818. Survey of Greek Literature. (3 Credits)

CUNY course in graduate Classics consortium.

CLAS 8819. Third Sophistic. (3 Credits)

From the Second to the Third Sophistic: history, culture, and religion (at NYU)

CLAS 8824. Greek Prose Composition at CUNY/NYU. (3 Credits)

CUNY/NYU course in graduate Classics consortium.

CLAS 8825. Vergil, Aeneid. (3 Credits)

CLAS 8829. Horace: Odes. (3 Credits)

At CUNY.

CLAS 8830. War Diplomacy Finance 323-30 at NYU. (3 Credits)

NYU couse in graduate Classics consortium.

CLAS 8831. Callimachus. (3 Credits)

At CUNY.

CLAS 8833. Modern Approaches to Ancient Historiography. (3 Credits)

At CUNY.

CLAS 8835. Greek Tragedy in the Mediterranean World. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8837. The Athenian Acropolis. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8839. Persian Empire. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8840. Ovid's Metamorphoses: Consortium Course. (3 Credits)

Course in Fordham-CUNY-NYU Classics consortium offered at CUNY or NYU.

CLAS 8841. Latin Prose Composition. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8842. Latin Composition at CUNY. (3 Credits)

Classics Consortium Course.

CLAS 8843. Aristophanes. (3 Credits)

CLAS 8845. Archaic Greek Sculpture and Sanctuaries. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8847. Augustus and the Creation of the Roman Empire. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8848. Rome and the Hellenistic East. (3 Credits)

CLAS 8849. Literary Theory. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8850. Hellenistic Poetry. (3 Credits)

CLAS 8853. Aristotle Ethics and Politics. (3 Credits)

At CUNY.

CLAS 8855. Greek Drama in Performance. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8856. Letters in Plautus. (3 Credits)

This course focuses on the epistolary motif in Plautine comedy, exploring the complex dynamics engendered when text appears on stage.

CLAS 8857. Euripides. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8858. Roman Family. (3 Credits)

A survey of the Roman family from the republican period through the empire with a particular emphasis on law and legal history.

CLAS 8859. Roman Law. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8860. Cicero's Rhetoric and Rhetorical Theory. (3 Credits)

At CUNY.

CLAS 8861. Vergilian Geopoetics. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8862. Thucydides. (3 Credits)

at CUNY.

CLAS 8864. Polytheism(s) and Society in the Ancient World. (3 Credits)

at NYU.

CLAS 8865. Roman Architecture. (3 Credits)

at CUNY.

CLAS 8866. Plato, Symposium Phaedrus. (3 Credits)

at NYU.

CLAS 8867. Presocratic Philosophy. (3 Credits)

A survey of the presocratic philosopher in Greek.

CLAS 8869. Sophocles' Poetics. (3 Credits)

An in-depth study of the poetics in Sophocles' tragedies.

CLAS 8870. Commentaries and the Classical Tradition. (3 Credits)

At CUNY.

CLAS 8871. Cognitive Theory and Classics. (3 Credits)

An overview of cognitive theory and its use in Classics.

CLAS 8872. Greek Hymns. (3 Credits)

An overview of Greek hymns down through the Hellenistic period.

CLAS 8873. Cleopatra Between East and West: Archaeology of the Twilight of the Ptolemies. (3 Credits)

An in depth study of Cleopatra and the end of the Ptolemies.

CLAS 8874. Future of the Past: Classics Then and Now. (3 Credits)

A survey of classical scholarship from the beginning of the discipline to the present day.

CLAS 8875. The Hetaira or Grief and Mourn. (3 Credits)

This course will focus on the theme of grief and mourning in Greek Literature.

CLAS 8876. Conceptions of History and the Linguistic Turn. (3 Credits)

This course will explore the different conceptions of history in antiquity and the impact of the linguistic turn on the study of history.

CLAS 8877. Virgil's Eclogues. (3 Credits)

This course will focus on the poetry and poetics of Virgil's Eclogues.

CLAS 8878. Greek Elegy and Iambi. (3 Credits)

This course will offer an overview of both elegy and iambic poetry in Greek Literature.

CLAS 8879. Aristotle's Metaphysics. (3 Credits)

An in-depth study of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

CLAS 8880. Aeschylus. (3 Credits)

An overview of Aeschylean tragedy.

CLAS 8882. The Process of Reading, Writing, and Delivering. (3 Credits)

An in-depth study of information was managed in the Greek and Roman World.

CLAS 8883. Greek and Roman History From/In the Arts. (3 Credits)

A study of the relationship between Greek and Roman History with the Arts. At CUNY.

CLAS 8884. The Architecture of Landscape. (3 Credits)

At NYU.

CLAS 8885. Archaeology of Maritime World. (3 Credits)

Survey of the archaeologies of the Maritime World.

CLAS 8886. Antiquity at Risk: Conflict Archaeology. (3 Credits)

This course explores the risk of studying classical antiquity in dangerous places. It emphasizes conflict archaeology, conservation, international law and cultural heritage.

CLAS 8887. Ancient Science. (3 Credits)

A survey of ancient science in ancient Greece and Rome.

CLAS 8888. Papyrology. (3 Credits)

Consortium course taught at CUNY.

CLAS 8889. Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. (3 Credits)

Consortium course taught at CUNY.

CLAS 8890. Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Ancient World. (3 Credits)

Consortium course taught at CUNY.

CLAS 8891. Archaeologies of Greek Landscape. (3 Credits)

Consortium course taught at NYU.

CLAS 8892. Catullus. (3 Credits)

Consortium course taught at NYU.

CLAS 8893. Short Third Century in Roman History. (3 Credits)

Consortium course taught at NYU.

CLAS 8894. Roman Geopoetics. (3 Credits)

Consortium Class at NYU.

CLAS 8895. Poetics of the Early Empire. (3 Credits)

Consortium class at CUNY.

CLAS 8998. Classics Intership. (1 to 3 Credits)

This course offers Classics graduate students (MA/PhD) the chance to work in an area of the discipline of Classics outside the conventinal curriiculum of the MA/PhD tracks. The number of credits (1-3) will be determined and approved in advanced by the Chair of Classics.

CLAS 8999. Tutorial. (0 to 4 Credits)

CLAS 9999. Dissertation Direction. (1 Credit)


 

To see classes offered through our consortium program, please visit our website.