Skip to main content

Classical Memories Modern Identities Series

Editors, Richard Armstrong and Paul Allen Miller

With cautious optimism, we hope the current anti-racism protests will provoke moves toward equity and justice. But how did we get to this moment? How can Classics help us process a historical and scholarly legacy of white supremacy? As a recent article stated, “Classics can and should be seen as a field with diverse origins and a rich history of contributions, interpretations, and reinterpretations by people of all races. It is not the heritage of one group of people to the exclusion of another, and it cannot be used to form the bedrock of a white supremacist ideology.” The editors of the Classical Memories/Modern Identities Series seek innovative scholarship that focuses on fully mapping out the racial complexities of the ancient world and how they relate to our time. We are looking for works that reflect on the contributions of African-Americans, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA), and other underrepresented groups in the field of Classics. We are also searching for works that investigate the archaeology of Classics as a discipline, the complexities and compromises of its formation and development, its appropriation by and for racist agendas, and its deployment as a tool of resistance.

The series is already dedicated to exploring how the classical world has been variously interpreted, transformed, and appropriated to forge a usable past and a livable present. Books published in this series detail both the positive and negative aspects of classical reception and take an expansive view of the topic. Thus it includes works that examine the function of translations, adaptations, invocations, and classical scholarship in personal, cultural, national, sexual, and racial formations. Please email Ana Maria Jimenez-Moreno at the Ohio State University Press for more information.