The discipline of Classics stands at a curious crossroads in academia. It has been displaced from a position of cultural centrality where it epitomized the old Humanities, to an uneasy, contested status where it is often assumed, wrongly, to be incompatible with new, emergent interdisciplinary Humanities. In departments of Classics, responses to the contrapuntal history of the discipline challenge the parochial, Western conceptions of a Eurocentric 'classical antiquity’. Through translation, adaptation, and other processes of mediation, Classics offers a sometimes unlikely cosmopolitan vernacular for diverse phenomena. This year-long colloquium will investigate questions of class and status, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and the history of slavery in ancient Greece and Rome. In addition, there will be reflective commentary on the complex histories of appropriation that have seen Classics mobilized in the service of imperialisms, nationalisms, and other invented traditions.