Graduate Program
Graduate Studies in The Classics
Princeton has been offering post-graduate study in the classics since 1869. The achievements of the many remarkable scholars who received their advanced training here stand collectively as one of our department’s most significant contributions to the field.
Two features particularly characterize our graduate program. The first is a longstanding recognition that an intellectual concentration on any aspect of the Greek and Roman world—its literature, philosophy, or history—must be founded on a broad and complex knowledge of their civilization as a whole. Not only do the fifteen permanent members of our faculty work across the spectrum of the discipline, from historical linguistics to reception studies, but the size of our scholarly community insures that all of us are continually exposed to different perspectives and approaches even within the various fields that make up classics. We believe that such a plurality of points of view makes it easier for our students to develop their own distinctive scholarly voices.
The second distinguishing feature of Princeton’s graduate program is its scale. We can provide a set of human and material resources equal to any research university in the country: an excellent, open stack, library, a varied program of lectures, opportunities for foreign travel and research, and proximity to the cultural and intellectual riches of New York and Philadelphia. The smaller size of the University’s graduate population fosters close intellectual ties between and among students and faculty. Close interdisciplinary links among the different humanities departments are another especially valuable consequence of Princeton’s scale.