CANE Summer Institute

The Classical Association of New England Summer Institute (CSI) brings together students, educators, and lifelong learners for an intensive week of lectures, mini-courses, reading groups, professional development workshops, and special events. Each institute considers the literature, history, and arts of the ancient Mediterranean world, and how we engage with those cultures today.

CANE Summer Institute 2019 seminar group

Free! Register for the 2023 CSI Public Lecture series

Our lecture series is free and accessible to the public via our live-streamed Zoom webinars! The full list of 2023 lectures is listed below in the right-hand tab under “Offerings”. To register, please click this link.

CSI is on hold for the 2024 season

At the April 29, 2023 meeting, the leadership of CANE voted to suspend CSI in 2024 and instead to form an ad hoc committee to review and make recommendations regarding year-round programming by CANE. The chair of the committee was the CSI Director for 2024, who also has been empowered to staff this ad hoc committee. CANE President Tim Joseph has appointed current CSI Director Meredith Safran as chair of this committee. The committee’s brief runs through January 2024, when its recommendations will be delivered to the leadership.

About CSI

The Institute was founded in 1983 by Edward Bradley, Phyllis Katz, and Matthew Wiencke of Dartmouth College and Gloria Duclos of the University of South Maine. After being based at Dartmouth from 1983 until 2011, the institute moved in 2013 to Brown University, under the leadership of Jeri DeBrohun, and continued to convene there through 2022 (save 2020 and 2021). 

  • July 11-16, 2022, Brown University and CANE Zoom
    • Maiores a(n)d Posteriores: Imagining “Classical Antiquity” into the Future
  • July 13-15 and 20-22, 2021, Virtually via Zoom
    • Power and the Individual in the Ancient Mediterranean World
  • July 8-13, 2019, Brown University
    • E Pluribus Unum
  • July 9-14, 2018, Brown University
    • Empires Ancient and Modern: Reactions to Imperial Power from Athens to the Americas
  • July 10-15, 2017, Brown University
    • The View from a Distance: Perspectives on the Greeks & Romans from across Space and Time
  • July 11-16, 2016, Brown University
    • Quid Sub Sole Novum? Imitation, Innovation, and Creation in the Ancient World
  • July 13-18, 2015, Brown University
    • Exegi Monumentum. Creating the Everlasting in the Ancient World
  • July 14-19, 2014, Brown University
    • “On the Shoulders of Giants:” Greco-Roman Giants and their Modern Emulators
  • July 15-20, 2013, Brown University
    • America’s Founding Fathers and the Classics of Greece and Rome
  • July 11-16, 2011, Dartmouth College
    • Spectacles in and of the Ancient World. spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.
  • July 12-17, 2010, Dartmouth College
    • “Not Athens But the World.” Why America is Still Listening to Ancient Voices
  • July 6-11, 2009, Dartmouth College
    • Expanding the Map: Cultural Exchange and the Peripheries of the Classical World.
  • July 7-12, 2008, Dartmouth College
    • Revolution and Reaction: Radical Changes and Continuities in the Ancient World
  • July 9-14, 2007, Dartmouth College (25th Annual)
    • Beyond Antiquity: The Legacy of the Classical World

Please note that lectures and courses at the institute are given in English; participation in the institute does not require knowledge of the ancient languages. CANE welcomes interested individuals who are new to the study of the ancient Mediterranean world and its modern legacy to attend the Institute, as well as graduate and undergraduate students. Participants may board on site or commute to campus for the week.

Questions? Please contact Meredith Safran, the director of the CANE Summer Institute, at summerinst@caneweb.org.

CANE Summer Institute 2023

“Classical antiquity”: a global phenomenon in local contexts

July 10-15 | Providence, RI and virtually via CANE Zoom

“Classical antiquity” has long functioned as a shared imaginaire that people around the globe have been constructing collaboratively for centuries. And yet, modern participants in the building of this proto-metaverse have been shaped locally, just as the ancient authors and artists whom we customarily simply call “Greek” or “Roman” hailed from localities within a vast and diverse region.

The many communities on the margins, relative to a dominant socio-political center, created myriad potential contact zones between imperial and local cultures where various interpretations of “classical” material could arise. So too in modernity, members of societies that do not identify as heirs of Western classical antiquity, or whose indigenous cultures were overwritten by colonial importation of Western classicism, may yet have their own history of fraught contact with Western societies and/or have adopted for their own purposes the narrative and aesthetic content for which “classical antiquity” serves as an ideological container.

For CSI 2023, we invite the examination of “classical antiquity” (both the historical content and the modern concept) through a localized or similarly specific lens. We explore the premise that there is no such thing as “a view from nowhere” and that one speaker’s knowledge and interpretation is always situated or positioned among other subjectivities. This is not to advocate for abandoning attempts to establish a factual reality, but to accommodate the polyphony of perspectives that has always existed on this particularly celebrated and controversial construction of humanity’s deep past. Such perspectives may include those specific to the United States, or a particular region, or a particular class, ethnic, or online community, any of which generates its own local knowledge and refractions of this “classical” world.

This year’s in-person CANE Summer institute will be held at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), with the support of the Brown University Department of Classics. We will once again offer a parallel online institute via Zoom meetings, with separate in-person and online mini-courses, shared professional development workshops and reading groups, and in-person lectures live-streamed via Zoom webinars.

Offerings

Registration Information

  • All are welcome: Participation in the institute does not require knowledge of the ancient languages. CANE welcomes interested individuals who are new to the study of Classics to attend the Institute as well as graduate and undergraduate students.
  • Enrollment in CSI requires membership in CANE. Your registration for CSI 2023 is not complete until your membership status has been verified. As you register for CSI, please join or renew your membership. The link brings you to the membership page of caneweb.org, which also outlines all the benefits of membership. Choose regular membership ($50) or student membership ($15). Thank you for your support of CANE!
  • Registration periods: The regular registration period runs until May 31st. The late registration fee will be waived!
  • What tuition covers: one morning and one afternoon mini-course, plus optional participation in professional development workshops, and Greek & Latin reading groups. In-person tuition is $375; virtual tuition is $250. Lectures are free, open to the public, and will be available both in person and virtually via livestream.
  • Both mini-courses must be in the same instructional mode: either in-person or virtual. Workshops and reading groups will accommodate both in-person and virtual participants. CANE welcomes people under 18 years old in the virtual format only.
  • Workshops and reading groups: professional development workshops and Greek and Latin reading groups are offered to CSI students. Workshops run Tuesday-Friday. Reading groups run Monday-Thursday.
  • In-person participants may choose to board at RISD or to participate as day students. Registrants who wish to participate in the in-person program must be at least 18 years old by July 10, 2023. In-person participants must abide by RISD’s policies.
  • Lodging (optional): at RISD
    • Lodging (Mon.-Fri. in an air-conditioned single + linen pack): $375
      Early arrival (Sun. night): $65
    • Meal plan (Monday-Thursday, any two meals per day): $100
      Single meals may be purchased at the dining hall entrance
    • Parking (Mon.-Sat.): $60
  • Deposit: A non-refundable $100 deposit is due at registration. The balance is due by June 1 for all registrants.
  • Accommodation requests: All CSI facilities are handicapped accessible. Please indicate your need for special accommodations for mobility, auxiliary communication aids, dietary needs, or other forms of assistance in a note with the registration form, or in an e-mail to the CSI Director Meredith Safran (summerinst@caneweb.org).
  • Code of conduct: By registering for the CANE Summer Institute, participants promise to abide by the CANE Code of Conduct and the policies of the Rhode Island School of Design (applicable to participants in the in-person program).

New in 2023! Tuition grant program information

For CSI 2023, a generous grant from the Delmas Foundation now enables CANE to provide tuition grants for:

  • first-generation undergraduate students (Class of 2013 to the present)
  • early-career educators (in the first 10 years)
  • graduate students and contingent faculty without access to internal support for professional enrichment/development.

 

Grants will cover full tuition in either format–$375 for in-person, $250 for online–until the amount in the fund reaches a level when only partial grants are possible.

  • Applications will be processed in the order that registrations are received, and grants will be awarded until the fund is exhausted.
  • Successful applicants will receive a note separate from the registration receipt, confirming the amount of the grant.
  • In cases where only a partial tuition grant can be offered, applicants for whom that partial grant is insufficient may cancel their registration and receive a refund of any payments made, upon request to CSI Director Meredith Safran <summerinst@caneweb.org>.

 

How to apply: To apply for this tuition grant, a self-declaration of eligibility on the registration form is required. No further documentation will be requested; we are using the honor system.

  • Applicants who use the online registration form: under the “Registration Options” drop-down menu, choose “Tuition grant application for in-person CSI” or “Tuition grant application for online CSI”.
  • Applicants who use the PDF of the mail-in registration form: indicate which program you prefer (in-person or online) and manually add the declaration “I meet at least one of the eligibility criteria for a CSI 2023 tuition grant.”

Registration Form

To register, please complete the online registration form below.

Do you have a strong preference for paying by check instead of online? Download the CSI 2023 flyer and registration form and mail it in with your check.