Saint Mary’s College Professor Chosen to Participate in Classics Seminar in Greece

March 21, 2018 (Notre Dame, IN) — Saint Mary’s College is pleased to announce that Megan Zwart, associate professor of philosophy, is one of a select group of faculty members nationwide chosen by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) and Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies to participate in a special Ancient Greece in the Modern Classroom seminar, “Traveling with Pausanias through Greece.”

CIC and the Center for Hellenic Studies recently selected 20 faculty members out of 76 highly competitive nominations to participate in the seminar, which will take place July 17–25, 2018. The seminar will begin at the Center’s facilities in Nafplio and visit historical locations in Greece, including Argos, Olympia, Delphi, and Athens. Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University, and Kenneth Scott Morrell, associate professor of Greek and Roman studies at Rhodes College, will lead the seminar. The program is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“Strengthening the teaching of the classics at colleges and universities is of critical importance. This seminar series addresses the challenge of keeping alive in undergraduate education classical texts that a generation ago were read and understood by every college graduate,” said CIC President Richard Ekman. “We believe that Megan Zwart will contribute to the seminar in meaningful ways and learn much that will energize teaching when she returns home.”

“I look forward to developing a first-year seminar to introduce students to the way philosophy was practiced by early Greek thinkers, who saw philosophy as immersive, transformational, and essential for reflecting on how to live a good life,” said Megan Zwart, associate professor of philosophy. “My hope is to develop a companion summer study abroad trip to Greece, so students can have the opportunity to walk in steps of the ancient thinkers we engage.”

For more than ten years, CIC has collaborated with the Center for Hellenic Studies to provide seminars on teaching the classics for small and mid-sized independent colleges that have a limited number of faculty members or courses in the classics. The seminar is ideal for faculty members who have been trained in other disciplines and who seek opportunities to explore major classical texts and learn new ways to teach these texts to undergraduates. For more information, visit the CIC website.