The Classics Flourish at Harvard Extension

What inspires Harvard Extension School students to flock to courses on the classical period?

"Inspiring," fascinating," "stimulating," "wonderful," and "stellar" are only a few of the adjectives students use to describe their classics instructors, some of whom are long-standing members of the Harvard Extension School faculty, and many of whom are recipients of the Extension School's teaching awards. "Most of our Extension faculty members in the classics are busy and productive members of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. That they take the time, year in and year out, to return to Extension School teaching is a tribute to their commitment to our students," says Michael Shinagel, Dean of Continuing Education and University Extension.

A number of Extension School students take advantage of the stability of the faculty by enrolling in a variety of courses in the classics. Fourteen of 34 students polled in Professor Gregory Nagy's course, Introduction to Greek Literature, for example, report that they have already taken at least one course with either Professor Nagy or Professor David Gordon Mitten. It is also common for Extension School students to take numerous classics courses from a single instructor. "The opportunity to take another course with Professor Mitten was not to be passed up. This is my third," claims one student in Introduction to Greek Art and Archaeology. Students in Professor Richard F. Thomas's intermediate Latin courses have been treated in recent years to a rich range of discrete courses on the works of Virgil, Petronius, Catullus, Cicero, Pliny, and Ovid.

Student interest in the classics reaches beyond the quality of the faculty to the discipline itself. Many of the students polled in Professor Sarolta A. Takács's beginning Latin classes, for example, stress the historical perspective gained through the study of the classics. "I have been so used to the kind of thinking that suggests that our modern world has the corner on innovation. But the more and more I read and learn, the less I know, and the world appears before me, not only broader and wider, but historically deeper," comments one student. A student in Professor Nagy's course states simply, "I wanted to start at the beginning."

Other students claim that the appeal of the classics stems from the rigor and interdisciplinary nature of the field. "It is the most rigorous of the humanities and, as such, draws the highest quality students and instructors," states one student; another says, "My experience is that the classics is the most interdisciplinary of fields." The latter view is echoed by Professor Takács herself, who says, "I like to stress the interdisciplinary nature of the discipline in my teaching, to study the Romans through their own voices, that is, their literature, their art objects, their cities, their religion, et cetera." Several Extension classics students are themselves high school teachers of Latin and history and seek to enhance their own teaching with that same interdisciplinary approach.

Faced with such fervor and interest on the part of their students, it should not be surprising that the classics faculty agree unanimously on the value of their Extension School teaching experience--similis simili gaudet ("like takes pleasure in like"). "Among Extension School students, there is a genuine sense of learning for the sake of pure learning--an ideal of liberal education that can easily, all too easily, become blurred by the pressures of careerist professionalism that undergraduates experience," states Professor Nagy. Professor Charles P. Segal, who is teaching Greek Tragedy for the first time in Extension this semester, already concurs: "I've thoroughly enjoyed presenting the material to older students and have been delighted with their enthusiasm, excitement, and probing questions. These students have the experience and maturity to engage with the tragic material of these great plays, with their issues of suffering, death, moral responsibility, and familial conflict."