You will find an academic and social home in the Department of Classics. Our program is rigorous, but as a small department, we provide extraordinary individual attention to students. Many students find they are able to double-major in Classical Civilization and another field of interest. 

The skills and knowledge acquired through the classics are easily transferable to other areas. You'll also develop a unique sense of perspective that comes from the study of a cultural history that is so broad and pervasive.

  • Triple Major Allison Jodoin Moves on to Graduate school

    When Allison Jodoin ’20 visited UVM on an admitted student day, she struck up a conversation with UVM Professor of Classics Mark Usher.

    “I had declared as an English major, and I told him I was looking for a program that really delves into the mechanics of language,” she remembers. “He convinced me that Latin was the best way to do that, and assured me that I’d have a chance to take Greek before I graduated. He was very right.”

    Jodoin will graduate as a triple major in Greek, Latin and classical civilization, and has accepted a fully-funded graduate school program at the University of Kansas.

    She took advantage of a significant tuition break offered to UVM classics students who reside in Maine, Rhode Island and Connecticut. A native of Rhode Island, Jodoin was eligible for partial funding from the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) Regional Student Program.

    As Usher had promised, Jodoin took Greek at UVM, added a minor in writing, and worked as a peer tutor in for several years in the University Writing Center. She studied abroad in Greece and Italy during doing archaeological field work, and developed an interest in the Roman epic which she developed into her senior honors thesis "Follow Your Dreams: an Analysis of Dream Classification Systems in Roman Epic."

    Studying the classics, Jodoin says, taught her a lot about public speaking and presentation, skills that will be central to her career in academia.

    “You read lot of oratory in studying Latin and Greek, but you also get at the roots of language and how language works.”

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A collage of famous people who studied classicsMeet your Classics Colleagues

Study the classics and you will join the ranks of some of the most influential men and women of all time--in all fields of endeavor. A few examples: Toni Morrison, William Shakespeare, Joe Paterno, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Jefferson, T. S. Eliot, John Stuart Mill, Sir Isaac Newton, e. e. cummings, Immanuel Kant, Salvador Dalí, Johann Sebastian Bach, Gertrude Stein, Indiana Jones, Karl Marx, Robert Graves, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Cleopatra, Ezra Pound, Bertrand Russell, Jules Verne, Sigmund Freud, Blaise Pascal, Desmond Tutu, J. R. R. Tolkien, Moses Maimonides, Desiderius Erasmus, W. H. Auden, René Descartes, Camille Paglia, Albert Einstein, John Donne, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, Umberto Eco, W. E. B. DuBois, Jean Racine, Jorge Luis Borges, St. Augustine, Wole Soyinka, Queen Elizabeth I, Ted Hughes, John Milton, J. K. Rowling, Galileo Galilei, Vince Lombardi, Mary Shelley, James Joyce, Sting, Max Weber, David Packard, James George Frazer, Willa Cather, Thomas Hobbes, James Baker, Martin Luther, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Friedrich Nietzsche, H. D., William Gladstone, Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Wilde, Michel Foucault, Alexander the Great, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ted Turner, Lord Byron, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Derek Walcott, Richard Wagner, Sören Kierkegaard, Sylvia Plath, Carl Jung, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth, Iggy Pop.

New and Ancient

"Parodos" from Euripides' "Helen." Euripides' original rhythms are set by Classics Professor John Franklin's "new ancient" melodies. Vocalists are UVM undergraduate and graduate students. Franklin has "recomposed" music in ancient Greek style for two plays, the Libation Bearers of Aeschylus (1999, London Festival of Greek Drama) and Aristophanes' Clouds (2000, Edinburgh Fringe). Musical selections from these are included on his CD, "The Cyprosyrian Girl: Hits of the Ancient Hellenes," along with other impressions of ancient music. 

Read the transcript of the music.

Greek Theatre for Modern Audiences

In the spring of 2018, Classics faculty, staff, students, and alumni came together to translate, stage, and perform a new collaborative translation of Euripides' Helen, in honor of Professor Emeritus Z. Philip Ambrose.

Read more about the production here.

Read about studying language