This course examines the profound history of Asian and Asian American engagement with Greco-Roman classical antiquity.  We begin by deconstructing the myth of "Western Civilization" and investigating orientalism in ancient and modern contexts. We explore the (mis)uses of the Greco-Roman classical tradition by both Western and Eastern imperial powers in the 19th-20th centuries, as well as the reappropriation of that tradition for different liberatory purposes. As we move into the 21st century, we focus on the Asian diaspora in the U.S. and consider how classical works have been reworked by Asian American artists to challenge dominant narratives and to uplift intersectional identities.

Asian/American Classical Reception is not just simply interpretations and adaptations of Greco-Roman culture and material by Asians and Asian Americans. 

It is a critical site in which to break down imagined geographies, racialized hierarchies, and other axes of domination that continue to prop up the false binary of East and West, and with it, the idea of an exclusively White and Western inheritance of Greco-Roman antiquity. 

The Department of Classics at UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin and So. Channel Islands). As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.