Center for Hellenic Studies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Center for Hellenic Studies is a research institute for classics located in Washington, D.C. at 3100 NW Whitehaven Street. It is affiliated with Harvard University.
Nestled in Rock Creek Park behind Embassy Row, the Center offers competitive fellowships to 12 "Junior Fellows" each year and provides them and their families with housing for the duration of their stay. Junior Fellows are selected by a panel of Senior Fellows, a group of five internationally-selected senior classicists. Junior Fellows are typically pre-tenured PhDs from around the world, most often from Europe or North America. The "Center", as it is commonly called, has been a stopping point in the careers of many budding classicists who have gone on to be major contributors in the field.
The Director of the Center is hired by Harvard University. The first director, acting (in 1962) as a substitute for Bernard Knox, was Michael C. J. Putnam (Brown University). He was followed by Knox (Yale University, 1963-1985), Zeph Stewart (Harvard, 1985-1992), and Kurt Raaflaub and Deborah Boedecker (Co-Directors, 1992-2000, Brown University). The current Director of the Center is Gregory Nagy (2000-present, Harvard).
The main building of the Center houses one of the world's premier research libraries for the study of the classical world. The library, while primarily used by resident fellows, is also open to the public. It includes a rare book room with several ancient manuscripts. The main building also houses offices for the fellows, the staff, and the administration. The wooded campus has a large mansion as the director's residence, a "stoa" with four apartments for the fellows with no families, three cottages for the fellows with families, and three subdivided cottages serving as double residences. There is easy access from the Center to Rock Creek Park.
[edit] History
The Center was established in 1961 through an endowment made "exclusively for the establishment of an educational center in the field of Hellenic Studies designed to rediscover the humanism of the Hellenic Greeks" by the Old Dominion Foundation, (the predecessor to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation). The governing body was the "Trustees of Harvard University" (not equivalent to Harvard University, however). The land on which the Center was built was donated by Marie Beale in memory of her son Walker Blaine Beale (Harvard University class of 1918) who died in World War I. In 1996, the Italian Embassy bought about half of the land from the Center and built a new facility there. In the mid-1990s, under the directorship of Raaflaub and Boedecker, the Center was greatly expanded (from 8 Junior Fellows to 12, and with a significant renovation of the library). The current Director, Gregory Nagy, has brought a new focus on outreach (both national and international), information technology, publishing, and collaborative research to the Center for Hellenic Studies, as evidenced by the Center's dynamic website (chs.harvard.edu).
