Diversity Statement

Supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion as a teacher and scholar requires that I be a flexible, open-minded, lifelong learner, prepared to educate myself about structural, systemic obstacles I have never faced and to work to be a better ally to those who deal with such challenges daily. As a straight, white man who grew up in a financially stable household, I have lived with many privileges that aided me on my path to earning an advanced degree and becoming an educator. It is my responsibility as a teacher, mentor, and empathetic human to work at making my classroom, community, and field more equitable so that my students and peers may similarly pursue their goals and reach their desired potential without impediment.



...In My Service

I am dedicated to serving my departmental and disciplinary communities by working to promote inclusivity and combat racism both on campus and in our field. I served as part of the Classical Studies Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Racism (IDEA) Committee at Duke to identify opportunities for creating more conversations centered on diversity and anti-racism within our existing courses and for developing more inclusive offerings. Our subcommittee, focused on undergraduate curricular matters, found that the department’s course offerings were disproportionately centered on the experiences of elite men and that many of our courses advertised as expansive surveys of ancient history, literature, or myth fixated on narrow time periods within mainland Greece or Rome. We recommended that the department build themes such as race, gender, slavery, and history of racism in the field into freshman “first year” seminars and senior “capstone” seminars. These courses by design change their topics regularly, we noted, and so beginning a review of our curriculum here would allow the department to introduce such themes (1) into a wide range of courses, (2) to a broad group of students, and, importantly, (3) within the foreseeable future. 


Furthering this curricular work, in the spring of 2023 my colleagues and I developed a graduate seminar on “Race and Racism in Classics,” now embedded in the Duke curriculum. Our course, created collaboratively by graduate students and faculty through months of careful reading and open conservation, dissects issues of race and racism entangled with the history of our field, addresses contemporary issues facing Classics (especially Classicists and Classics students of color), and explores actionable steps for creating a more equitable, inclusive, and anti-racist discipline.

 


...In My Classroom

I also work to foreground the lived experiences of the underrepresented and marginalized individuals who inhabited ancient Mediterranean antiquity in my own course design. Teaching about the practice of magic in the ancient world, for example, offers abundant opportunity to introduce students to artifacts and even texts produced by slaves, women, and other individuals otherwise erased from the conventional telling of history. In my course, “Magic in the Ancient World”, students have the opportunity to read curse tablets—imprecatory pleas to the gods inscribed on lead and then buried—authored by, for instance, enslaved women demanding justice against their abusers. In historical sources that survive from the ancient Mediterranean world, we too often receive an account of history solely from the perspective of the abusers and the oppressors. A focus on texts like these curse tablets, which preserve the voices of historically marginalized and oppressed people, helps to push against this skewed narrative.


When I teach ancient languages, I recognize that access to the study of these languages is a barrier and gatekeeping measure that harms the diversity and inclusivity of Classical Studies. Most of my teaching experiences have been at the elite, private school where I earned my Ph.D., and so many of my students have arrived in my language courses with some exposure to Latin or Greek in the past. This atmosphere poses particular challenges for students who come from underserved backgrounds and can create an inequitable environment in the classroom. When I was selected by my department through a competitive Provostal Summer Course Development Grant to develop an intensive seminar on ancient Greek, I was determined to address some of these systemic issues by learning about and implementing more equitable models of assessment. I built this language seminar around the principles of “specifications grading,” which help me to mitigate inequities in the classroom caused by varying degrees of student preparation or knowledge prior to the course. I have since implemented this system in all of my language seminars. Students are graded solely by the work they choose to invest in the course, determined by the learning objectives they choose to pursue. For example, students who wish to pursue the “B-Grade Bundle” of learning objectives choose to “Meet Expectations” on all translation exams and on most vocabulary and grammar assessments; students who wish to pursue the “A-Grade Bundle” choose to “Meet Expectations” on all exams and almost all other assessments and also choose to complete an additional project exploring the history and culture of the language. Students know in advance what expectations are for each assessment and may revise or retake all assessments until their work “Meets Expectations.” In this way, my students are empowered to focus on their own learning goals and progress and are not disadvantaged for having no prior access to classes in ancient languages.



...In My Scholarship

My research as social historian, like my teaching and service work, aims to elevate the voices of people who have been marginalized by history and is especially focused on the lived experiences of enslaved laborers, female scribes, and other individuals historically viewed as low-status. My study of ancient scribes, for example, refocuses the question of knowledge production back onto the individuals who actually wrote our texts. In the ancient Mediterranean world, scribes were generally not of an elite class and in fact many were slaves. I assert the importance of these and other marginalized individuals in ancient Mediterranean culture, stressing that many of the ancient readers and writers who have copied and preserved our “classical” texts were slaves, women, and came from diverse regions all around the Mediterranean, not just Athens or Rome. 


Both my research and teaching seek to expand the scope of Classics beyond the study of Greece and Rome. My academic focus on the comparative writing cultures of Greco-Roman Egypt and Aksumite Ethiopia broadens the traditional view of the ancient Mediterranean world to include African civilizations beyond Egypt. I believe that re-defining the bounds of “Classics” in this way is critical to teaching students a full, rich and accurate account of the ancient world and, further, is important for making our field attractive and inclusive to students interested and invested in classical traditions beyond those of Europe and North Africa.



Learning Constantly, Striving To Do More

In my service, teaching, and, research, I work to redirect the focus my discipline has historically placed on elite, white men instead onto the diversity present in the ancient world and the contributions of marginalized individuals to history. My pedagogical approach aims to empower all the students in my classroom, providing them with a flexible and equitable learning environment. I recognize that my own understanding and experiences are limited and that I can never consider my efforts enough. I am dedicated to constantly learning and doing more to support diversity, equity, and inclusion in my classroom and my community.