The annual Outreach Prize of the Society for Classical Studies (SCS), a prize of $300, recognizes an outstanding project or program by an SCS member or members that makes available and accessible an aspect of classical antiquity to an audience other than Classics scholars or students at their home institutions. This project or program may be of any kind and in any medium, including but not limited to, film, stage performance, public event(s), website, video, podcasts, visual arts, or print. Projects or programs promoting any area of Classics are eligible for the prize, as long as that project or program is grounded in contemporary scholarship and reaches a public beyond the academy. Priority will be given to projects or programs that engage in a sustained manner with contemporary concerns in the community (broadly construed). Candidates for the prize must currently be SCS members, and nominees may be individuals or groups.
Nominations (which may be self-nominations) should consist of a letter of nomination and a detailed description of the project or program, including any materials that may have been produced (such as a program, book, or audio-visual material). Evidence of the impact or extent of the nominee's work will greatly strengthen nominations (e.g., statistics, demographic information, published reviews, testimonia from participants or beneficiaries, etc.). Nomination materials must be received by the extended deadline of 11:59pm EDT on October 25, 2024. Nominations will remain in consideration for a three-year period and will be judged by the three members of the Outreach Prize Committee.
The process for submitting nominations will be different in 2024-2025 than in past years. To apply, please submit a nomination through our award, fellowship, and grant application system: apply.classicalstudies.org. The form will open for submissions two to three months before the deadline.
Previous Prize recipients include Herbert Golder, Boston University, Editor-in-Chief of Arion and Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, Brandeis University, for a program entitled “The Examined Life: Greek Studies in the Schools” (2003); Roger T. Macfarlane, Brigham Young University, Television Documentary, "Out of the Ashes: Recovering the Lost Library of Herculaneum" (2004); Marianne McDonald, University of California at San Diego (2005), Mary-Kay Gamel, University of California at Santa Cruz (2009), and Peter Meineck, Aquila Theatre Company (2010) for their efforts to bring classical drama to general, non-professional audiences; the Steering Committee for the University of California Multi-Campus Research Group in the History and Culture of Late Antiquity for the creation of teaching materials for middle school social studies classes; Michele V. Ronnick, Wayne State University for her work describing the experiences of Black Classicists in the post Civil War period (2006); Brett Rogers and Ben Stevens (2016) for their initiative on classics and science fiction; Roberta Stewart (2017) for her work over a number of years in organizing and leading reading groups on the Homeric epics with US veterans. In 2018, awards were made to Sarah E. Bond for her public writing and the University of Cincinnati Classics Department for their outreach program. In 2019, Donna Clevinger and Salvador Bartera from Mississippi State University won for their performances of ancient dramas. In 2022, the Peopling the Past team won for their multi-media public resources on the ancient world. In 2023, the prize recipient was The Siren Project: Women’s Voice in Literature and the Visual Arts, an interdisciplinary initiative of the University of Virginia.