by KC Trommer

Walking the quiet corridors of the Graduate Center in the summer, one can hear the voices of students issuing from the classrooms as they puzzle out passages from Horace’s Odes. Their sometimes hesitant translations from the Latin are punctuated with gentle corrections from the professors. Moments such as these only hint at the ferocious concentration and dedication with which students in the Latin/Greek Institute approach the ten-week intensive program.

Every June through August for the past thirty-seven years, the Graduate Center and Brooklyn College have jointly run the Institute, which has been hailed for its intellectual rigor and is considered the best of its kind in the country. In the course of each eight-hour day, students buckle down to cover the equivalent of what would be a week’s worth of material in a normal college setting. Courses are team-taught by faculty who are drawn from private schools and a variety of colleges and universities—including this year Barnard and Columbia.

Both undergraduates and graduates from across the United States come to study at the Institute. Those with no previous training in either language follow the basic program, while those who already have achieved a level of proficiency follow upper-level courses of study.

Lindsey Breuer of Cinnaminson, New Jersey, a Princeton undergraduate who is majoring in classics, heard about the Institute from her Princeton professor, who is also an Institute graduate. Breuer wanted to study Greek without having to divide her attention between learning the language and her other classes, so she applied to the Institute to make the most of her summer. “When I go back to Princeton in the fall, I think I’ll be able to hold my own against the Advanced Greek students,” she says proudly.

The coursework demands that students sustain focus and fully immerse themselves in the ancient language they have chosen. “I had no idea when I came that Latin would take up every single minute of my time,” says undergraduate Anna Marie Clifton. An art history major at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) whose primary interest is medieval art, Clifton hopes that her newly-cultivated facility with Latin will pay dividends when she applies to Columbia University’s graduate program in art history.

Clifton’s professor at SCAD recommended the program to her with the caveat that she should only undertake such intense study if she “had the nerve.” Her time at the Institute has sparked an appreciation of Latin poetry. Between translating passages from Book IV of the Aeneid, Clifton bought a copy of De Rerum Natura, a long poem written by first-century Latin poet Lucretius that explains Epicurean philosophy.

If one of the aims of learning is to spark the desire to know and understand more, the Latin/Greek Institute seems to be hitting the mark. For more information on the Institute and admission requirements, contact Administrative Director Rita Fleischer at rfleischer@gc.cuny.edu.