Why read The Culture of Classicism?

Book cover of The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910

Book description

Debates continue to rage over whether American university students should be required to master a common core of knowledge. In The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910, Caroline Winterer traces the emergence of the classical model that became standard in the American curriculum in…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Culture of Classicism as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dean Hammer

Author

Winterer provides the classic discussion of the place of Rome (and then Greece) in early American education and intellectual life. The book is about how American classicists sought to shape a relationship to the classical past that persists to this day, creating a canon of ancient texts as a reaction against and refuge from modernity. The real payoff of this book for me lies in showing how the past is never just the past but a continuing aspect of our own identity-formation.

From Dean's list on The best books on the connection of ancient Rome to an American identity.