In a November symposium organized by Arum Park, a new generation of Classics scholars from across the country gathered at the University of Arizona to discuss how the field is expanding by examining connections with Asia.
The two-day symposium, supported by a Faculty Seed Grant from the Office of Research & Partnerships and a Capacity Building Grant from the Research Leadership Institute, included both scholarly presentations and a roundtable discussion about the future of the field and what can be gained from exploring Classics and Asia together.
Park, Associate Professor of Classics, is a former co-chair and current board member of the Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus and co-editor of the new University of Michigan Book Series “Classics and Asia at the Intersections.” Park said she conceived the symposium out of admiration for the innovative research she’s seen in the AAACC community and the importance of sharing it with her home institution’s faculty, graduate students and undergraduates.
Speakers included UCLA’s Kelly Nguyen, who explored how Vietnamese writers from the French colonization era to contemporary times have engaged with the Greco-Roman classical tradition for different liberatory purposes; College of the Holy Cross’s Dominic Machado, presenting comparative readings of civil war poetry from ancient Rome and modern Sri Lanka; and the University of Washington’s Christopher Waldo, whose work on Asian American writers’ engagement with classical antiquity brought critical attention to a whole body of modern literature that had largely been ignored by previous Classicists.
“This kind of work responds to and pushes against a more traditional way of thinking about Classics, that modernity and antiquity are totally separate, and it has inspired my current book project on Asian identity and Greek tragedy,” Park said.
The roundtable showcased the AAACC’s revolutionary dual mission of both promoting groundbreaking research and supporting and elevating Classicists who inhabit marginalized identities. The roundtable included Nguyen, Machado and Waldo, along with Katherine Lu Hsu, Tori Lee, Young Richard Kim and Ellen Bauerle, moderated by Park.
“I saw the roundtable and symposium as an opportunity for us to speak explicitly about the spirit of support and community at the heart of our work as Classicists,” Park said. “It’s vital that we counter the model of isolated, competitive, and even combative knowledge production that can be pervasive in academia, to expand knowledge through human connection, and to forge human connection through the expansion of knowledge.”
Waldo, the author of the forthcoming first book in the University of Michigan series, said the focus on mentorship has played a significant role in developing this community of scholars.
“The vision that we have is important for sustaining the future of Classics. One of the classes I teach is about race and identity in antiquity, and my students get so excited about these topics and about talking about the future of the field of Classics and where this study of antiquity can go,” he said. “A lot of students see themselves represented just because I’m the professor of the class, but when they can read articles by Asian American scholars, they get excited about that. They like this much more contemporary vision of the field and it makes them more interested in taking more Classics classes. It gives me hope about the future.”