Each academic year, the JHI sponsors up to 12 Working Groups, consisting of graduate students and faculty conducting research or engaging in other scholarly exchange. In conjunction with the 2025-26 Working Groups Call for Proposals, we're highlighting a current Working Group—Classics and the Black Atlantic. This working group explores the contributions of Black artists, writers, and theorists to the field of Classics and its reception, discussing texts which reimagine, revise, and/or reject Classical themes and tropes. This group centres transnational Black Atlantic perspectives, building on foundational works like Afro-Greeks and African Athena, and addressing broader humanistic questions around anti and postcolonial strategies, legacies of imperialism and capitalism, and feminist intersectionality. Co-lead Letticia Cosbert Miller answered a few questions recently ahead of their final event, Odysseus at the Bag Check: Greek Myth and Immigration in Contemporary Poetry with Professor Emily Greenwood of Harvard University.
This is your Working Group's first year. What does your group do, and what, if anything, has changed from the original concept for the group?
Our Working Group, Classics and the Black Atlantic, meets once a month to consider the contributions of Black artists, writers, and theorists to the field of classics and its reception. These discussions take shape through guided discussions of primary texts, such as Wole Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides, coupled with scholarship that helps take us beyond the content of the text itself. To my surprise, the original concept for the group has remained intact, and my modest expectations have been surpassed week after week, thanks in no small part to the enthusiasm and rigour each member brings to our discussions.
How has the Working Group experience been so far?
The experience so far has been nothing short of wonderful. The idea for the group was borne out of my desire for community, as a counter to the isolation academics can sometimes feel while engaged in research –and often amplified for those whose work extends beyond the traditional boundaries of their disciplines. The interdisciplinarity of our membership has made the working group especially generative. I have felt particularly fortunate to witness practicing artists, curators of contemporary art, and scholars from disciplines across the humanities, including Classics, all engaging in the most important debates in the study of ancient Greece and Rome.
Can you give us a synopsis of any events your group has organized/is organizing this year?
We are wrapping up activity for this year, and our final meeting will host Professor Emily Greenwood of Harvard University. One of the world’s most prominent classicists, Professor Greenwood’s groundbreaking contributions to the fields of Black Studies and Postcolonial Theory, vis-a-vis Classics, has informed not only the formation of this Working Group but much of its structure. We are thrilled and honoured to have her lead our final discussion, which will consider the reverberations of Homer in Derek Walcott’s poetry. Professor Greenwood will also be delivering the inaugural Arts & Science Lecture in Classics on April 25th, for those who are interested. Her talk is titled Odysseus at the Bag Check: Greek Myth and Immigration in Contemporary Poetry.
Do you have any advice or words for others thinking of applying for a JHI Working Group?
I believe that the success of our Working Group belongs to its members and the individual ways in which they enlivened and enriched our collective work. With that in mind, I would recommend that applicants consider seriously who they want to be in conversation with, and who, in turn, will be most up to the task.