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The Warrior Book Club: Advancing Social Justice for Veterans through Collaboration

By Molly Harris

Classical literature can offer a vehicle for examining and promoting the understanding of modern war experiences.[i] Yet while ideas for social justice projects might emerge organically from our research and seem perfectly suited to address problems we see in our communities, the actual execution of such projects requires careful planning. This paper describes one such project, the Warrior Book Club, which the author developed as a graduate student in collaboration with the state veterans museum.

Reading Homer in and outside the Bars: An Educational Project in Post-Conflict Colombia

By Rodrigo Verano

"In 1990, the Colombian Ministry of Culture set up a system of itinerant libraries to take books to the inhabitants of distant rural regions. [...] According to one librarian, the books were always safely accounted for. ‘I know of a single instance in which a book was not returned,’ she said. ‘We had taken, along with the usual practical titles, a Spanish translation of the Iliad. When the time came to exchange the book, the villagers refused to give it back. We decided to make them a present of it, but asked them why they wished to keep that particular title.

Engaging Minority Students: Modifying Pedagogical Practice for Social Justice

By Casey Moore

For modern students, Classics is uncanny in its ability to feel both very familiar and very foreign. Within this space, the discipline offers a unique opportunity to engage in questions of subjectivity and difference that inform modern discourses surrounding social justice. In traditional Classical education, however, the discipline often continues to perpetuate certain racial, classist, and gendered attributes, making marginalized students feel alienated from the material.

At Intersections: Teaching about Power and Powerlessness in the Ancient World

By Elina Salminen

My paper will detail the design, teaching, and outcomes of a class on inequality in Classical Greece. The course is currently being taught (Winter 2017) in a small learning community inside a major public university. The course includes a substantial comparative element, with the goal of moving beyond off-handed comparisons to truly testing how we can use the past as a tool to think with about modern-day US and, conversely, seeing whether the theory of intersectionality can be fruitfully applied to the ancient world.