Critical Ancient World Studies (CAWS) is a ‘methodology for the study of antiquity’ (p. 1) which makes four steps to move away from the discipline of Classics:
1. Reject a Eurocentric view of Greco-Roman antiquity as a foundation myth for the West and its ‘universal’ values;
2. Reject an assumption of exceptional ‘cultural value’ in the Classics;
3. Deny positivistic (i.e. objective) accounts of history;
4. Decolonise the study of antiquity.
The book's 14 chapters are divided between five sections: Introductions; Critical Epistemologies; Critical Philologies; Critical Time and Critical Space; Critical Approaches. This review is not going to debate the merits of CAWS; this is beyond the credentials of the reviewer – a Latin teacher at a non-selective UK state school – and will also depend on a reader's politics. For such a review, see Stróżyński (Reference Stróżyński2024). Due to space constraints, this review will focus on chapters which raise questions relevant to teachers.
In Chapter 1 (Towards a Manifesto for CAWS), Umachandran and Ward situate the book within critical commentary of Classics, such as Said (Reference Said1978) and Bernal (Reference Bernal1987). They compare Classics to a ‘haunted house’. The ‘spirits’ of the ancient world haunt the house, possess the humans who make the house their ‘intellectual homes’, and are summoned by humans from outside the house for ideological purposes (pp. 4–5). They criticise the UK charity Classics for All, whose mission statement (now revised) advocated extension of Latin in state schools, because it ‘shows why we in the West are as we are’ (p. 5), thus providing ‘fresh blood’ for the ghosts.
Inclusivity issues are indeed not solved by offering a flawed subject to excluded groups. One distinction, however, between higher education (where the editors work) and school-level outreach is that, in the former, ‘inclusion’ seeks to compensate for unequal school access to Classics, whereas organisations like Classics for All seek to nullify it (see Searle, Reference Searle, Natoli and Hunt2019, pp. 93–5). This minor omission unveils a nagging theme which runs throughout the book: when Classics in schools appears, its potential relationships with higher education go unrecognised.
In Chapter 5 (Epistemic Injustice in the Classics Classroom), Lance recalls a (US-based) undergraduate class on Thucydides' Melian Dialogue where she witnessed ‘classmates argue the Melians should have simply acquiesced to the Athenian demands’ (p. 78). Lance, a member of a Native American tribe which colonists massacred in the 19th century, argues ‘in a more just classroom, a professor would be able to reshape expectations’ (p. 85). This would avoid epistemic exploitation and credibility excesses (concepts in social epistemology – see Fricker (Reference Fricker2007)) which compel marginalised students to keep quiet rather than speak out. This chapter encourages teachers to consider the importance of scenario planning when teaching sensitive topics (see Hunt, Reference Hunt2022, pp. 171–2).
In Chapter 6 (Comparative Philology and CAWS), Ram-Prasad outlines philology's relationships with Classics and linguistics respectively, its use of the Comparative Method, and its development in the hands of colonial administrators and race scientists. He argues that, in order to decentre Latin and Greek as the only viable routes into philology, philology needs to (1) remove disciplinary boundaries between Latin, Greek and other ancient languages, (2) make all languages available ab initio in universities, and (3) debate which languages institutions teach, why, and how. Interestingly, Ram-Prasad suggests it is ‘absolutely reasonable that we could make language-teaching work at an undergraduate level without having to rely at all on school education’ (p. 102). This raises questions as, for the foreseeable future, university Classics intakes will consist of students who both have and have not studied Classics before. How universities create equitable degree courses, which provide continuity for some and both quality tuition and just assessment for others (see Canevaro et al., Reference Canevaro, Canevaro, Mazzinghi Gori, Stead and Williams Reed2024, pp. 36ff.), is a project which schools and universities could collaborate in, rather than go their own ways.
In Chapter 9 (Colonial Cartography and the Classical Imagination), Umachandran critiques the compilation of the Barrington World Atlas (Talbert, Reference Talbert2000). They note the selectivity which a simplified representation of space requires, the problematic notion of ‘significance’ (p. 146) in making selections (which excludes ‘bottom-up’ evidence of ordinary life), and the publisher's paradox of mapping selectively and ‘comprehensively’ (PUP, 2000). This critique reminded me of the words of Michael Fordham (a History educator – see https://clioetcetera.com/) to History teachers about deciding what curriculum content should be ‘a given’ and what is ‘up for grabs’ (Fordham, Reference Fordham2024). With school students, we cannot critique every source of knowledge. But we can debate when and where it would be powerful to do so (see Wineburg, Reference Wineburg2012, pp. 67–9).
In Chapter 13 (Critical Reception Studies), Ranger argues that 20th century American poet Sylvia Plath developed a ‘classicising impulse’ while studying at Cambridge to fit in with her ‘Classically educated upper-middle class grammar school’ peers (p. 218). They contend that Plath's deployment of Classical material in her ‘bee poems’ ‘draws on a history of privileged white women co-opting and downplaying racist oppression in their comparisons of women to slaves’ (pp. 220–221), thus discrediting the self-empowerment sought by ‘white feminism’ (p. 216). It is interesting that Plath's peers studied English; their Classical education ended at school. Indeed, whilst about 5,000 UK undergraduates study Classical-related subjects today (Butterfield, Reference Butterfield2022), about 10,000 students annually take GCSE Latin (CSCP, 2015, p. 7) and many more study Latin aged 11–14. Given that CAWS prioritises breaking down Eurocentric ideologies which Classics reinforces, it seems an editorial omission not to consider what a CAWS approach might entail for teaching the many students whose Classical education begins and ends years before they get anywhere near university. For an audience of teachers, this is the book's biggest weakness.
I enjoyed reading this book for its eclectic theoretical approaches and its challenge to reflect deeply on why I teach ancient civilisations. In this vein, the chapters identified may be useful for interested teachers to take back into their departments for discussion. The content does not relate to school curricula. The section titles do not easily tie together the 14 chapters. Nevertheless, CAWS is an intriguing, hard-hitting contribution to debate about the place of antiquity in education, past, present and future.
Open access
