CLASSICS, ORIENTAL STUDIES, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF AMERICA’S WESTERN IDENTITY, 1865–1930
Date
2023-05
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The American education system changed drastically between the end of the
Civil War in 1865 and the interwar period up to 1930. In the years leading up to the
Civil War, institutions of higher education adhered to the classical curriculum, which
promoted the study of ancient Greek and Latin for the development of moral citizens.
In the face of industrialization and professionalization that came with the late
nineteenth century, the classical curriculum lost value and fell by the wayside.
Colleges and universities instead turned to the sciences and vocational fields such as
engineering and agriculture. This professional and scientific turn provoked great
changes in the field of classics so that it acquiesced to the data-driven methodologies
of the newly formed social sciences. Accompanied by its novel sister discipline,
Oriental studies, the social-scientific study of classics began to divorce the field from
religion and the Biblical chronology while adhering to the social evolutionary model.
The revitalized field of classics and Oriental studies gained prevalence in the inter-war
period as America found itself a global power.
This thesis explores the archives of five major universities as well as
scholarship published in classics and Oriental studies between 1865 and 1930 to
construct a narrative of the emergence of “Western civilization” and a solidified East-West binary in American thought.