History professor Charles Hedrick will use his recent UC Presidential Chair appointment to establish and develop a new program in Ancient Studies on the UCSC campus.
The program will draw on faculty resources from across the academic divisions and will provide a home for the study of the ancient world in the UCSC History Department.
"At present, the only curricula for the study of the ancient world at UCSC are Classical Studies, and Greek and Latin Literatures," said Hedrick.
"The traditional field of Classics will be foundational to the program in Ancient Studies, but I am proposing a wider geographical field-expanding the concentration to include the entire Mediterranean in the immediate future, and eventually the entire old world."
The president of the University of California supports Presidential Chairs on each of the 10 UC campuses through an endowment established in 1981 by the UC Regents. Annual support for the three-year Presidential Chair is $45,000.
The positions are offered to distinguished members of the university's faculty and are intended to encourage new or interdisciplinary program development or to enhance quality in existing academic programs.
"Professor Hedrick provides an original rationale for the study of the ancient world that incorporates and is more in tune with a post-modern sensibility and a global perspective," noted Georges Van Den Abbeele, UCSC's Dean of the Humanities Division.
