欢迎来到维克森林经典系。为了延续可追溯到远古世界的传统，该部将研究古希腊和拉丁语言以及用这些语言编写的文献作为中心任务。我们还致力于教学和研究，涉及更广泛的文化问题：我们的目标是了解和欣赏整个古代世界，并考虑其对现代世界的影响。我们是遗产的捍卫者：我们寻求维护该遗产，对它进行更深入的了解，并将其传播给子孙后代，以供他们享受和丰富。
The Department of Classics seeks to offer a transformative education to its majors and minors and to students who take only one or two classes with us. We have as our central commitment the study of the ancient Greek and Latin languages and of the literatures written in those languages. We are also engaged, both in teaching and research, with broader cultural issues. Our goal is to understand and appreciate the Greek and Roman worlds as wholes and to consider their influence, for better and often for worse, on the modern world. In spring 2020, for example, we offered a Classics seminar titled Ancient Worlds, Modern Crises, and our divisional classes (including Classics Beyond Whiteness and Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Antiquity) examine these issues as a matter of course. A recent alumni characterizes our department as inclusive, intersectional, critical in a productive way, and valuing conceptual knowledge over nitty gritty facts.<br><br>The Wake Forest University Department of Classics believes that the study of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds can, because of its influence for better and worse, help us better understand modern times. Classics, the study of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds - which spans three continents, more than two millennia, and dozens of languages, societies, and ethnic groups - does not hold exclusive or special claim to this, but rather focuses on two world-historical cultures that merit study in their own right and as a pathway to reevaluate and reflect on the values and practices we and our societies espouse.<br><br>Ancient Greece and Rome were Mediterranean rather than European societies, stretching across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Greece and Rome were not the beginnings of civilization, but rather were influenced by nonviolent cultural exchange with the civilizations of Africa, the Near East, India, Central Asia, and northern Europe, and were active participants in violent imperialist expansion and cultural appropriation in these areas, as well.