Race, the Classics, and the Colonial United States

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, / Taught my benighted soul to understand / That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: / Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. / Some view our sable race with scornful eye, / "Their colour is a diabolic die." / Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, / May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

You just read Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America” (1773). What does the poem mean, who is Phillis Wheatley, and what can her poem and life story tell us about Classics? I’ll answer that question by the end of this resource, but for now allow me to introduce myself and the project at hand.

My name is Hilary Gallito and I’m an undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins studying History and Classics (I sometimes just refer to these majors as “long history”). Through my time studying at Hopkins, I’ve come to find myself as a scholar interested in the intersections of these fields. 

It all started freshman year when I took a class about the concept of “virtue politics” from antiquity to the present-day. We spent a week learning about colonial America and my professor had us read from the Declaration of Independence. This seemed really boring. Why was I reading the same document over and over again in history classes from middle school, to high school, and then in college? 

During class, my professor drew my attention to the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and explained that the Founding Fathers were likely interacting with Aristotelian thought when they wrote such a phrase. Why would they do that? Why were a group of men interested in writing the Declaration of Independence looking back on a philosopher who lived thousands of years ago? I was instantly hooked. I came to realize that this phenomenon had a name: classical reception.  

In recent decades, the study of classical reception -- that is, how the classical world, especially Greek and Roman literature and motifs -- has been received since antiquity, has gained traction. Although the study and practice of the reception of ancient Greek and Roman literature and motif has always existed, whether it be called that explicitly or not, it was not until the past 50 years or so that classical reception got its name and became popularized. 

Perhaps the function of reception studies is most obvious in historical periods like the Italian Renaissance, or in looking at modern adaptations of classical plays, like Disney’s Hercules. Less obvious, perhaps, is the importance of classicism in the colonial Americas. Even more obscured are the connections between race, classical reception, and colonial North America.

This resource serves as a starting point to begin thinking about classical reception and theory and contextualizing the colonial Americas. I suggest that classicism was a central intellectual project of colonial North America, evidenced not only by its presence in the well-to-do classes of white America, but wider-ranging groups of peoples. 

In each of the following subsections, I will offer a few books or resources as a starting point to a variety of issues as related to this topic and provide a brief overview of why I think they are so important to engage with. I’ve selected books that have all been published within the past 25 years to try and present to you contemporary scholarship that reflects on current trends within History, Classics, or any related discipline. These books have really helped me to explore classical reception and its significance in the American colonial setting, and I hope they can inspire you. I would not be half the student I am today without having read this selected literature.

I've tried to represent how I think about this project with the diagram below. Click on the buttons to explore different themes that, for me, are crucial to understanding race, the classics, and the colonial United States. In the middle I've included a picture of Phillis Wheatley, as her life story and writing serves as a culmination of my project.

To best use this resource, I recommend beginning by reviewing "Classical Reception" (2), then "Colonial Context" (3), "Racecraft" (4), "Archival Silences" (5), and finally the image of Wheatley herself (6).

1. See Morrill, Penny C. The Casa Del Deán : New World Imagery in a Sixteenth-Century Mexican Mural Cycle / Penny C. Morrill ; Photography by Juan Carlos Varillas Contreras. First edition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014 for more on the Casa del Dean. See also  Dr. Andrew Laird  (Brown) for more on humanism and reception theory in colonial Latin America.
2. Classical Reception:  https://arcg.is/1L1yTz 
3. Colonial Context:  https://arcg.is/XPK8L0 
4. Racecraft:  https://arcg.is/04OnqS 
5. Archival Silences:  https://arcg.is/80bqu 
6. Phillis Wheatley:  https://arcg.is/1Sj5eK0