Why & How do we teach Race in Antiquity?

1.  race-time.net :  A Growing Online Resource  Built by JHU’s Classics Research Lab–Race in Antiquity Project (RAP) ⏳
2.  Who: List of Panelists  🧑‍🏫
3.  How: The Event Workflow ️
4.  Highlights: Why Race & What is Race  💡
5.  For Interactive Leaners: Full Event Audio  🎵

The remainder of this article reflects the public conversion that occurred on March 7th from 3-5 pm, with the topic of “Why & how do we teach race in antiquity”.

The Race in Antiquity Project aims to create and web-publish teaching and learning resources on race in antiquity, answering shared needs and co-led by  Dr. Nandini Pandey  (Associate Professor of Classics & Director of Undergraduate Studies, @ Johns Hopkins University) and  Dr. Arum Park  (Associate Professor of Classics, @ the University of Arizona).

The quick story is that about four or five years ago, I really felt the need to teach about race and antiquity, but I didn't even know where to start...I realized that there were other people who knew how to do that, and if I could just collect everybody into the same room and get them to help create a full resource that would equip someone like me to teach a delicate topic like race and classics, it would help not just me, but everybody else.

This resource is really a collaborative endeavor. None of us are equipped, because of our own disciplinary training and its limitations, to tell any kind of a full picture about all the groups in antiquity; and beyond that, [there] were marginalized groups that didn't get to speak for themselves in the archival record.

Launched in Spring 2019 by  Dr.Shane Butler  (Professor of Classics, @ JHU),  the Classics Research Lab (CRL)  is a unique program that engages undergraduates and graduate students in project-based learning.

The Race in Antiquity Project (RAP) was officially launched in Spring 2024 as  twelve lab members  (undergraduate & graduate students from various academic fields) collaboratively created a preliminary website called  “Race Against Time”  under Dr Pandey’s supervision

The website, the Race in Antiquity Project, and the scholarly networks they generate will evolve through future CRL courses at Hopkins as well as contributions from students and teachers at other institutions.

We think there is a need for a web resource on race… [and] these wonderful students of mine in the classics research lab are building this website. … We want it to be something that you and your own students now and in the future could use, that you could give to grad students who want to pursue any of these topics and that you could share with [anyone who asks] "Why should someone like me care about classics?" So we're really hoping the more minds [we have on creating] this resource, the better and stronger the resource will be. We're also hoping that the people in this room will be kind of a network… an incubator organization for helping build this resource.

I'm really excited about today's panel, as well as this amazing array of wonderful scholars of race in all its forms that you see in front of you.

•  Dr. Nandini Pandey : Associate Professor of Classics, Johns Hopkins University

•  Dr. Arum Park : Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Arizona

•  Dr. David van Schoor:  Assistant Professor of Classics, Emory University

•  Dr. Rebecca Futo Kennedy:  Assistant Professor, Denison University

•  Michelle McPherson Miller:  Latin Teacher, Waynflete School, ME

•  Ian Lockey:  Latin Teacher, Friends Select School, PA

•  Dr. Kelly Dugan:  Instructor & Academic Advisor, Stony Brook University

•  Dr. Najee Olya : Assistant Professor of Classical Studies,College of William & Mary

•  Dr. Angel Parham : Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia 

•  Dr. Suzanne Lye:  Assistant Professor of Classics, UNC-Chapel Hill

•  Dr. Jackie Murray : Associate Professor of Classics, SUNY Buffallo

In this first public gathering of the ‘unconference,’ participants were organized into smaller groups comprising 4-5 individuals while visiting experts circulated among them to engage in discussions.

 Dr. Pandey  and  Dr. Park  posed five key questions centered around the development of an online resource for race and antiquity, each allotted 8 minutes for discussion. Within each group, a designated scribe recorded a concise, collective response on a Post-it note. These notes were collected and panelists reconvened after every question to reflect on and synthesize their group’s insights.

We want to discuss the WHYs -- Why are you here? Why do you want to learn about race? Why did you show up for something with this possibly provocative title? We're going to do things like coming up with a working definition of race together …, and identify what resources exist. We also would love to hear from those of you who are not trained classicists. That is a good thing. We would love to build from your various disciplinary expertise. We want your thoughts on [our] website and course design.

This section highlights some questions and answers that emerged. For more content and conversion, please refer to our  fully annotated/transcribed audio resource. 

People’s positions and experiences in society affect a lot about the way they think and know. We want to ask why some stories are told and others aren’t.

While race keeps changing, the very core idea of race has immutability – there's that paradox that undermines the very concept in the concept. We called it a science fiction. We fix and solidify physical qualities and use ancient sources to back them up in a retrospective, rhetorically opportunistic way.

We care about race because it has modern relevance, so trying to understand it in other contexts is useful. The only way to understand something in its current context at its core is by understanding how it is different in other contexts. If we can see past the categories we use and the structures that make the categories meaningful, then we understand how race works better and hopefully work towards dismantling it.

All of us had different reasons to come around and want to study race, but how can we not?

[There are] mental gymnastics that we have to go through to avoid talking about race, and why have we done that for the last few centuries?

It is our responsibility, and if we're not thinking about it, we're contributing to it.

Part of what we talked about is that some of us don't really have a choice about whether or not we talk about race …especially if you come from a non-white background. You can choose to learn about it and share the information you have as accurately as possible to what we know, or just let myths perpetuate and maybe cause harm if you don't.

Race is a technology or doctrine of population management that institutionalizes prejudices, oppression, and inequality based on imaginary and changeable signifiers for human cultural and/or physical difference, signifiers that manifest differently in different times and places (i.e. it is historically contingent and fluid).

Race is the intersection of categorizations of people and power hierarchies. We also wanted to add that race has a history. To treat it as if it were transcendental, possessing transcendent powers of signification, would be to fall into the trap of race.

Race is a constructed system of hierarchical classification using biological, genetic, and geographic factors that differ by time and place, and are expressed in idiosyncratic ways. 

Race is a social construct in which people have to treat each other in oppressive relationships. When you see racism, race is operating.

Race is a way of accounting for lived experience, and it can be both positive and negative; there can be associations that allow us and others to be categorized into groups.

Race is often internally imposed. It's you [that puts] it on your own population. You're not putting it on somebody across the world. It's how you manage those among you. And so it's often the foreigners among us that become the targets.

I think the historical contingency is really key to the mission of [our] resource. [When] we look back at antiquity–which had many ways of arranging societies around power dynamics but were not color-based as … today–it helps us to see race as an illusion that becomes a reality, and it helps us to deconstruct the world that we live in that has such effective power. I think it's incredibly liberating to travel to the past to be able to see the present with greater clarity.

After the lively discussion exploring the intricacies of 'why race' and 'what is race', the panelists delved into hopes and possibilities for the online resource. They also shared their insights on effective pedagogy. The unconference culminated in a Q&A session that elicited enlightening reflections from both professors and undergraduates. Please refer to  the time-stamped unconference audio  below for further exploration of these conversations.

If you enjoy this article so far, you are more than welcome to listen to  the audio recording  of the entire event (edited & volume-adjusted). Guiding time stamps are provided to help you locate a specific section of interest.

• 0:00-1:00 Dr. Pandey’s overall introduction

• 0:57-2:20 Dr. Park’s introduction+project backstory

• 2:17-4:04 Dr. Pandey’s introduction to CRL-RAP & the website

• 4:05-7:59 Goals & set-up for the session

• 8:00-10:50 Ground rules for conversation explained by Dr. Park & Dr. Pandey

• 10:46-12:52 Question 1 Prompt

[Discussion Starting from 12:53-18:06]

• 18:07-19:08 Question 2 Prompt

[Discussion Starting from 19:09-32:40] 

• 32:41-40:59 Question 3 Prompt & Discussion

• 41:00-49:10 Question 4 prompt & Discussion

• 49:11- 49:42 Question 5 transition

• 49:43-1:00:51 Question 5 prompt & discussion

• 1:00:52- 1:05:28 Dr. Pandey’s thanks

• 1:05:29- 1:21:05 Q&A and final thanks from Dr. Park

For a more interactive listening experience, an “audio-transcript complex” produced by Whisper AI (an automatic speech recognition system from OpenAI) is available in  .whisper format  for those who prefer viewing content with auto-scroll AI-generated subtitles using the Whisper Transcription App on MacOS or PC. To import the whisper ‘unconference’ audio, simply drag and drop the file into the application interface--enjoy!