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The future of Classics in Higher Education looks grim. Over the past eight years there’s been a 33% decline in CLL and CIV majors, a loss of 600 undergraduates. When the average number of bachelor majors per department is 7.6 per year, it begs the question: can that sustain our field? The dissolution of Howard University and the University of Vermont's Classics Programs seem to be signs of a future trend. A future without Classical Studies.

Five years ago, I had the opportunity to redesign the entire Latin curriculum for my independent high school. My overriding mission was to create courses that engaged students meaningfully and taught skills that applied beyond the Latin classroom. Currently, I am concluding the first iteration of our Latin 5 course launched this school year. Its curriculum has been informed by those working to combat the abuse and misuse of Classics both within academia and the broader public. The course is organized in three parts: Identity, Education, Activism.

In academia, mind/body dualism has long created a paradoxical experience of embodiment. Faculty and students are expected to live “lives of the mind” as though the (higher, rational, transcendent) mind exists entirely separate from the (lesser, animal, material) body.

This paper aims to illustrate an educational experience in an Italian prison (Casa Circondariale di Rebibbia, in Rome) based on Greek tragedy, as part of a university project: the author organized reading and discussion groups concerning tragedy and justice, together with inmates (convicted of mafia, camorra, ‘ndrangheta groups etc.) and ‘external’ university students. In fact, some inmates were especially interested in Ancient Theatre because of the presence in Rebibbia of a very good theatre workshop (cf.

In my paper I will use an original course I taught for the Classics Department at UC Santa Barbara in Fall 2021, “Tragedy of Displacement: ancient theater and modern immigration, migration, and incarceration,” as a case study to discuss issues of activism, equality, and community-based learning in the classroom. The course taught students how to read themes of voluntary or forced displacement as they intersect with issues of trauma, gender, and identity in ancient Greek drama and contemporary adaptations.

The language of “mystery” that grew up around the Eleusinian cult was related to practices of initiation, one of which imposed a vow of silence upon those inducted. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter stipulates this vow (478-79; Richardson and Foley): the legomena, dromena, and deiknumena of the rites were not to be spoken (Burkert, Mylonas, Cosmopoulos). They were arrheta, “unable to be put in words,” and aporrheta, “forbidden to be put in words,” terms that point to both ineffability and prohibition.

Mystery cults are riddled with mysteries. The cult of the Kabiroi near Thebes is no exception. Pausanias opens his section on the Kabirion (9.25.5) with the observation that he cannot speak about τὰ δρώμενα in the rites performed at the Kabirion.

Theurgy constructed a distinctive discourse on the theology and practice of secrecy. One of the most refined products of the mysterisation of religious culture in the Roman East, theurgy creatively reconfigured the registers of philosophy, cult, and poetry to build a powerful vision of ineffability, where the languages of telestic ritual and wisdom are inextricably imbricated. There is a veritable ontology of secrecy at the heart of this intricate refoundation of tradition in search of a concealed world.

The notion of secrecy in the ancient mystery cults has been recently discussed through the approach of the cognitive science of religion (Panagiotidou 2018; Larson 2021). The notion of “secrecy” however is not a straightforward term to define. Although it originates in Greece, it has been also attested in other mystery cults in the wider Mediterranean, including the cult of Mithras (Bjørnebye 2012; Friese 2015).

The paper offers insight into the stages and activities undertaken within the international and multidisciplinary programme Our Mythical Childhood, with a special focus on the Our Mythical Childhood Survey – a database of works inspired by ancient culture and intended for children and young adults.