“The Solution is to Start Building the Community You Imagine”: One Graduate Student’s Experience in Co-founding an Organization and Network of Scholars Dedicated to Antiracism and Pedagogy in Classics
By Kelly Dugan
I am a third-year PhD student specializing in antiracism and Greek and Latin pedagogy. In 2016, having earned my master’s degrees in Classics and (historical) linguistics, I started my doctoral program knowing that I wanted to use my skills and teaching experience to combat racial injustice within Classics and educational environments as a whole. At the time, there was no known Classics organization dedicated to antiracism and the teaching of race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism in ancient studies. Two months into my first year, I reached out via email to Dr.
Perspectives and Methods in Graduate Student Union Organizing
By Kenneth Elliott
In Fall 2018, I was elected Vice President of the graduate student union COGS (Campaign to Organize Graduate Students). COGS represents the approximately 2000 graduate students employed by the University of Iowa as TAs and RAs and works to ensure that we all have fair wages, benefits, and working conditions. The Vice President is in charge of organizing on campus, which includes membership drives, community outreach, and other events.
How to Build a Community: My Experiences Founding and Growing a Classics Graduate Organization
By Samuel Kindick
As graduate students, our departments are our homes and our institutions are our identities. Since many of us will be members of our departments for at least five years, it behooves us to not only be active members of the departmental community, but to improve it in any way that we can. In this paper I will recount my experiences and lessons learned while working to strengthen the graduate community and positively affect the departmental culture at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The Classics Coffee Hour: Creating Connections and Promoting New Ideas through Graduate Student Service
By Ekaterina But and Colleen Kron
The “Classics Coffee Hour” was founded in 2016 by graduate students in the Department of Classics. In our presentation, we (the founding organizers) will discuss the structure, funding, and management of the group. We will describe the successful platform we created to organize and promote events that respond to graduate student concerns and interests, including: current research trajectories, new theoretical trends and reception studies, professional development, pedagogy, and multi-disciplinary approaches in Classics and related fields.