The Department of Classics at Johns Hopkins offers research “laboratories” in which undergraduate students can enroll for credit as they would any normal course. Each lab project will be different, but each will engage students in direct, empirical research connected to the current work of the faculty member in charge. Some projects will complete their work in a semester, others may be ongoing or intermittent. For intermittent projects, students may join for just a term, or return.
Current Projects
The John Addington Symonds Project (JASP)
Led by Shane Butler (Classics), originally co-led by Gabrielle Dean (Sheridan Libraries), this project was launched in spring 2019, and continued in fall 2021, spring 2023, and fall 2024. This project’s central task has been the reconstruction of the contents of the personal library of John Addington Symonds, author of the first major English-language study of ancient Greek homosexuality (privately printed in 1883 in just ten copies, one of which was located and acquired through the project’s efforts) and a major figure in the early struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. More on the JASP website; you can also read an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about JASP. (Authentication may be required.)
Antioch Recovery Project (ARP)
Led by Jennifer Stager (History of Art), this project was launched in spring 2020, and continued in fall 2021 and fall 2023. This project investigates mosaics from the ancient city of Antioch-on-the-Orontes, now dispersed across at least twenty-five locations around the world, with thirty pieces housed in the Baltimore Museum of Art. Reuniting these fragments digitally, it also explores the motivations and ethics of archaeological research and display.
Baltimore ReCast: Ancient & Modern Bodies in an American City (BRC)
Led by Emily Anderson (Classics), this project was launched in fall 2020, and continued in fall 2022 and fall 2024. This project has drawn its inspiration from the dispersed collection of plaster casts of ancient sculpture once housed in Baltimore’s Peabody Library. Reconstructing the collection and details of its layout, it has also turned to its use in the education of Baltimore’s diverse population.
The Race in Antiquity Project (RAP)
RAP is led by Nandini Pandey (Classics) and was launched in spring 2024, continuing in spring 2025. This project will generate an open-access educational resource regarding, on the one hand, ancient understandings and representations of identities and ethnic differences and, on the other, the use (and abuse) of the Greco-Roman past in later histories of ethnicity and race.
A World of Orators: Speaking in Public in the Roman Empire (WOO)
This project is led by Matt Roller (Classics) and was launched in spring 2024. This project aims to create a searchable database of all instances of public speaking or oratory that are documented in surviving texts that refer to the early Roman imperial age, roughly 14 – 117 CE in the first instance (from the reign of the emperor Tiberius through that of Trajan). The core resources for this project are full texts of the relevant authors in English translation. We hope that this archive, once it is developed sufficiently, can be made publicly available and serve as a resource for scholarly research in the future.