Graduate Program

Ours is a vibrant intellectual community of classicists with diverse specialties and wide-ranging interests; we are committed to the innovative and theoretically informed exploration of the ancient Mediterranean world. Graduate work here accordingly mixes rigorous training in the materials and skills of specific disciplines with openness to new approaches and dialogue across media, genres, time periods and specialties. We are actively seeking PhD students who will contribute to this distinctive intellectual atmosphere and who will thrive in its particular strengths and opportunities. Is Stanford right for you? Are you right for us? 

In what follows, we explain how this commitment informs each of our four PhD tracks: Greek and Latin Language and Literature, Ancient History, Classical Archaeology, and Philosophy/Ancient Science. Below that is a description of our funding packages for PhD students and some information about requirements and expectations for admission. Please e-mail Jennifer Trimble, the director of graduate studies (trimble at stanford.edu) if you have additional questions, and feel free to contact faculty members with whom you are seriously interested in working.

Language and Literature

Greek verbal art, originating as it did in various performance traditions, orally transmitted and context-sensitive, forces us to question how the later notion of "literature" can even apply to it. To study it means also to challenge concepts of genre and form, audience and style, rhetoric and myth as they have developed in post-Classical eras. In order to do justice to these demands, over the magnificent range of Greek writing from all periods, the Stanford program requires two key intellectual commitments: willingness to undergo rigorous philological training and openness to analytical approaches of many kinds. Core teaching faculty in Greek language and literature include Richard Martin, Natasha Peponi, Susan Stephens, Rush Rehm, and Andrew Devine. 

Stanford's approach to Roman literature is equally distinctive. The study of textual and verbal artifacts draws energy from a continuous dialogue with other approaches to the past. Our first aim is to offer a competent and grounded introduction to the interpretation of texts, with an emphasis both on the production of original research and on teaching practices; while we work on those aspects, and prioritize the intellectual and professional growth of PhD students, we encourage interaction with research on history, material culture, philosophy, and science, and of course with studies of Hellenic culture and literature. Core teaching faculty in Latin language and literature include Alessandro Barchiesi, Christian Kaesser, and Grant Parker, and Andrew Devine. 

Training in both Greek and Latin is provided through intensive reading, with close attention to issues of textual tradition, grammar and syntax, dialect, meter, and discourse features. Analytical approaches are introduced within the framework of courses, and vary with the materials at hand. The template of curricula and choices is broad enough to accommodate many different preferences, but the recurring accent is the need to renovate our perception of Classical, canonic texts, with the help of modern theory and of developments in the study of culture and social practice. Hellenists and Latinists at Stanford are particularly interested in methods and results coming from discourse analysis, linguistic poetics, interpretive anthropology, political theory, social history, geography, religious studies, science, law, medicine, aesthetics and philosophy, urbanism, reception and translation studies--not so much as static contexts, but as resources for further questioning. Most of all, students are encouraged to form their own approaches.

Ancient History

Stanford's approach to the study of ancient history integrates cutting-edge theories and methodologies, drawn especially from the social sciences, with more traditional methods of historical analysis. Along with gaining a solid grounding in Classical languages and culture, and in the ancillary skills essential for professional-level work in ancient history, Stanford students specializing in ancient history may prepare themselves to do original research by taking seminars in a variety of departments, including economics, political science, history, and Anthropology. Our approach is exemplified by the publications and current projects of our faculty and current students: core research interests of the ancient history faculty and students include demographic change, long term economic growth and decline, and the impact of political institutions upon state performance. Core teaching faculty include: Maud Gleason, Ian Morris, Josh Ober, Richard Saller, and Walter Scheidel. 

Stanford's ancient historians are dedicated to the project of simultaneously expanding and deepening the field. We encourage our students to develop research projects that make use of comparative history, intellectual history, historical geography, and archaeology. We are constantly seeking to identify new analytic tools and bodies of data that will enable our students to solve important questions that have stumped earlier generations of scholars. Finally, we are committed to collaborative work. Both in and out of the seminar room, graduate students and faculty work together as joint participants in a collaborative research group. Our common goal is to ask the best possible questions about how and why things happened the way they did in the ancient world, and to use the very best methods and all the available evidence in coming to the right answers.

Classical Archaeology

What most sets Stanford classical archaeology apart is its theoretical dynamism and interdisciplinary commitment. It is part of Stanford's interdepartmental Archaeology Center, a connection that offers students a structural and intellectual engagement with broader perspectives and cutting-edge methodologies from other disciplines, especially anthropology. For the study of the ancient Mediterranean world, this means (for example) understanding not only the material record of Magna Graecia but also the modern intellectual frameworks that took form there and helped shape the entire discipline. It means that evaluations of whether fifth century BCE Greece or the Roman Empire were good to live in can depart not from ideological presumptions about cultural value and significance but from a rigorous comparative assessment of the material evidence for living standards. It means developing ways to understand the multiple effects of visual representations and ancient artworks on the people who saw them and lived with them. It means that archaeological engagements with place and its representations can range from theater archaeology to deep mapping to a collaboration with computer scientists on the Severan Marble Plan of Rome. And, it means that issues of cultural heritage and ethics are considered central--and richly illuminating--aspects of the material relationships and knowledge structures we create around the material past. In recent years, classical archaeology graduate students have worked on faculty projects at Monte Polizzo, Sicily, in the Roman Forum, at Çatalhöyük in Turkey, and at student-directed projects at Dhiban in Jordan and Tell Sheikh Hasan in Syria. We actively foster opportunities for students to develop and direct their own archaeological projects. Core teaching faculty include Giovanna Ceserani, Ian Morris, Michael Shanks, and Jennifer Trimble.

Ancient Philosophy

Stanford's approach to the study of Ancient Science and Philosophy is unique. We do not engage in an abstract history of ideas: we situate ideas in context in multiple, complex ways. We might expect our graduate students to think, for instance, about Plato in terms of genre and its intertextualities; about Galen, in terms of the body in performance; about Euclid, in terms of cognitive psychology and the history of the book. Above all, we challenge our students to come up with their own, creative ways of re-situating and re-thinking ancient knowledge. Core teaching faculty include Reviel Netz, Andrea Nightingale and Chris Bobonich (in Philosophy). 

While Stanford offers a PhD track in Ancient Philosophy, our students may pursue the study of Ancient Science and Philosophy within other tracks (such as Language and Literature or Ancient History), reflecting our inter-disciplinary commitment. We thus make every effort to fit our program to each student's individual preparation, and individual career plans. We also encourage our students to seek advice and to study with other programs (with which our faculty are cross-affiliated), such as Stanford's leading Department of Philosophy, a Stanford's Interdepartmental Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, and Stanford's department of Comparative Literature, famous for its path-breaking combination of philosophy and literature. We believe that Stanford is, today, the best institution in which to pursue an innovative approach to ancient intellectual history, and we welcome applications from original, creative students.

Graduate funding and requirements for admission

Our funding package for PhD students is very strong. If admitted into the program, you are guaranteed five years of funding, including tuition, a stipend, and summer support. We also have excellent funding for fieldwork, conference and research travel, and can offer especially good support for study and research in Mediterranean countries. Six years is the expected maximum time to degree; by the sixth year, students are normally well advanced in their dissertations and able to win university or national fellowships. Teaching experience is part of the training, though not in the first year. PhDs from our program have done very well on the job market, both in winning postdoctoral fellowships and in landing tenure-track positions. The department's placement record is excellent. In the past few years, our new PhDs have taken up postdocs at Columbia, Brown, Berkeley, Brandeis and Macalester; visiting positions at Knox and UGA; and tenure-track positions at NYU, Boston University, Bowdoin, USC, UNC-Chapel Hill, McGill, Ohio State, San Francisco State, Florida State, Holy Cross, Texas Tech, Gettysburg, Evergreen, and Richmond. 

The application deadine is December 1, 2009 (see Stanford's graduate admissions site). For admission into the PhD program in Classics at Stanford, you should have a strong background in Classics or a related field. Depending on your particular interests, this might include Comparative Literature, History, Political Science, Archaeology, Anthropology or Philosophy. Coursework in Latin and Greek need to be commensurate with your goals: the Language and Literature track requires advanced work in both languages before you arrive, the History and Archaeology tracks somewhat less. Modern languages are needed, too--as part of your professional development, you will have to pass a German translation exam plus one in French, Italian or modern Greek, and there is very little time in graduate school to learn these languages from scratch. Above all, we are looking for applicants who understand the opportunities of our program, have clear intellectual goals, and who are a great fit for Stanford Classics.