Reconstructio Americana: Ancient Greece and Rome after the American Civil War

The emergence of professionalized classical scholarship in America in the second half of the nineteenth century goes hand in hand with the experience of classical scholarship happening elsewhere: many of the figures who anchored institutional reorientations (such as Gildersleeve, Goodwin, or Allen, all of very different persuasions) had spent time abroad, often in Germany, to train in new methods of specialized philological research.

Ely Parker (Seneca, 1828-1895) served as a bilingual and intercultural communicator and diplomat throughout his life, and has been described by one biographer as a “warrior in two camps” (Armstrong 1978; see Parker 1919 for an invaluable earlier biography by Parker’s great-nephew, and Michaelsen 1996 and Rifkin 2014 for more recent discussions).

Women’s associations are often studied in the context of philanthropic efforts for social reforms (Scott). These groups, despite their centrality in movements from Reconstruction through the Progressive Era, have largely not been studied for their usages of Classical antiquity. While American women’s Classical education is better-studied (Winterer, Prins, Malamud), at present there is a less cohesive historiography of women’s engagements with ancient material culture in Reconstruction.

Established in 1819 by Thomas Jeffferson, the University of Virginia (UVa) encapsulated a new form of innovative curriculum would become the later bedrock of the ideal of American higher education. The design of the University was revolutionary, including faithful evocations of classical architecture in America (Wilson et al. 2009).