Roko Rumora Responds to Growing Debate in the Field of Classics
March 23, 2021
Roko Rumora (Ph.D. Candidate, Art History) has been published by Jutarnji List, Croatia's most widely circulated daily newspaper, with his opinion piece, "The Racism of Classics…in Croatia?"
Responding to a growing debate about racism and the political implications for the field of Classics, Rumora points out that the topic of critique is not antiquity itself, but the institutional discipline which studies it. In the piece, he outlines the debate by unraveling three current problems with disciplinary field of Classics: the closed-off nature of the profession, conflict among Western practitioners about who western Antiquity belongs to, and the intertwining of classical history and white supremacy. Rumora then reframes the terms of the debate for a Croatian audience and addresses the grave ways that Classics risks destabilizing the young Balkan nation's already shaky identity.
Read “The Racism of Classics…in Croatia?” from Jutarnji List in Croatian or Rumora’s English translation.
