This program as a whole emphasizes the cultures that utilized the Greek and Latin languages from the classical (at the M.A. level) through the late antique and medieval (at the Ph.D. level) eras.  Our faculty and students are deeply interested in ancient texts and ideas, and also in the reception and transformation of those modes of thought and expression in later periods.

Scholarly context

This later emphasis at the doctoral level reflects the department's reputation as a center for the study of Christian Greek and Latin, and is exemplified by two series of published dissertations it has sponsored over the years, Patristic Studies and Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin Language and Literature, and by The Fathers of the Church, a well-known series of English translations published by The Catholic University of America Press and long associated with this department.

This unique heritage in the study of late antiquity and the medieval period, which is shared by other departments and programs at the university, has also been responsible for the development of a number of projects undertaken by the university press, notably Studies in Christian Antiquity, Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, and the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, a series devoted to the medieval and Renaissance translations of ancient Greek authors and the Latin commentaries on ancient Greek and Latin authors up to the year 1600. A current initiative is The Library of Early Christianity, a series of texts with facing-page translations.

The Department of Greek and Latin also participates enthusiastically in the university's Center for Medieval and Byzantine Studies and Center for the Study of Early Christianity.