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Four years of CLSC 199 in Greece: Celebrating 2022-2025, and looking forward to 2026!
By: Dr. Mark D. Hammond (mdh120)
I still remember the days just before Spring Break in 2020 … Everything had been booked and arranged, our orientations and paperwork were completed, and we were just a few days away from flying to Athens when the COVID-19 pandemic grounded all travel. Transforming what should have been a study abroad in Greece into a reading seminar over ZOOM was not ideal but, as with many stories set amidst the pandemic, we somehow made it work.
Study abroad returned with a vengeance for Spring Break 2022, and CLSC 199 was there to take 17 students to Athens, Greece (including two of our students who were robbed of the trip in 2020), all with the help of our providers at the Athens Centre (https://athenscentre.gr/) (FIGURE 1). I dusted off my materials, conducted my interviews, and to each student I inevitably said something along the lines of: “The weather in Greece during March is unpredictable – when the sun is out it’s hot, and if it rains you’ll be quite chilly, but it probably won’t snow.” I was trying out a revised itinerary that included the island of Aegina where the students got to visit the temple of Aphaia … during a snowstorm (FIGURE 2). Needless to say, our bus driver was reluctant to take us to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi the next day, as far up in the mountains as it is. Luckily, I was joined that year by Prof. Evelyn Adkins (FIGURE 3) who, like me, is an alum of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens – together we were able to put together a last-minute itinerary that took students to the stunning Byzantine church at Daphni, the lesser-known but striking Temple of Apollo Zoster in Vouliagmeni (where we could have a beach-side lunch), and the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion which we were able to visit as the sun was beginning to set over its stunning view of the Aegean Sea (FIGURE 4). Our “plan B” worked out so well, I decided to keep it for all my future itineraries!
2022 marked a fresh start for CLSC 199 in a lot of ways. (… most notably, I no longer tell students not to expect snow…!)
Side-note … That same year also saw Prof. Adkins and myself team up again to offer CLSC 326 – Rome on Site: The Archaeology of the Eternal City, during the summer. We brought 13 students to Rome for 17 days, seeing much of the city and taking side-trips to Ostia and Pompeii. From 2023 to 2025, our summer abroad programming was led by Prof. Paul Iversen who took students enrolled in CLSC 318 – Archaeological and Epigraphic Field School for excavations in the harbor of Lechaion, near Corinth, Greece. I don’t want to steal anyone’s thunder, so I’ll let you all contact Prof. Adkins and Prof. Iversen to hear about the exciting details from those programs!
Armed with our new itinerary, I was joined by Dr. Timothy Wutrich for Spring Break 2023. CLSC 199 – Athens: Idea and Identity from Socrates to Byron included a whopping 20 students, maxing-out the enrollment cap for the first time since I began leading the program (FIGURE 5 and 6). With that many students, conversations and excitement were more pronounced than ever. One of our students, Luca Alvim, even brought a Kodak Super 8mm camera with him to create a short video about the trip that I still treasure to this day. I could say more, but I think I’ll let one our students, Emma Baumann, do the speaking for me via her excellent article in CWRU’s The Daily: https://case.edu/news/photos-students-reflect-their-study-abroad-experiences-over-spring-break.
For Spring Break 2024, the course was renamed CLSC 199 – Athens: City in Context after I re-tooled it to make it satisfy the new UGER requirements (of which I managed to fit in THREE!).
It was perhaps fitting that we marked this change by revisiting the program’s roots and we were joined by Prof. Rachel Sternberg (FIGURE 7 and 8). For those of you who don’t know, she created CLSC 199 and I still consider myself fortunate to have been handed the reigns of the program for Spring Break 2019 (in fact, this was the very first course that I taught for CWRU!). 18 students joined us this year for a trip that I recall being marked by beautiful weather all week long (FIGURE 9). Some of our students continued a tradition that began in 2022 involving early morning jogs up and down the various hills in Athens before my itinerary for the day even began … as always, more power to them! Again, I’m happy to let my students say more: see what Silvana Cantelmi wrote about the course in The Daily: https://case.edu/news/photo-gallery-see-pictures-cwru-students-who-spent-spring-break-abroad.
Spring Break 2025 saw the return of Dr. Timothy Wutrich as my wingman to help shepherd our 15 students (FIGURE 10). Inspired by the early morning athletic pursuits of some of my previous students, I encouraged Dr. Wutrich to organize a run on the public track of the Panathenaic Stadium (FIGURE 11) … which left me limping for a day or two. Additional (humbling) activities included an attempt by the students to teach me how to take a decent “.5 selfie” … I’m still working on it (FIGURES 12 and 13). Every year I bring some of the best students that CWRU has to offer, but there was something about the 2025 group that placed them among the most engaged and out-spoken students that I’ve had the pleasure of working with … maybe seeing their professor repeatedly compromise his authority had something to do with that… One more time, I hand it over to one of my students, Vida Barzdukas, who wrote the following for the College of Arts and Sciences: https://artsci.case.edu/news/spring-break-with-poseidon-and-the-parthenon/.
The upcoming 2026 program will mark the sixth time that I have led CLSC 199 (actually seventh, if you count 2020), but I have lost count of the number of times I’ve visited Athens. It is hands-down my favorite city and I consider it a second home. Going to my “happy place” is imagining myself on top of Philopappos Hill, right around sunset, overlooking what is arguably the best view of the Acropolis and the city (FIGURE 14, 15, and 16). I always end our first full day on that hill, after delivering a lecture that I had already written all the way back in 2011 following a flash of inspiration from the Muses. In many ways, my entire take on the city of Athens, its “Idea and Identity,” stems from that lecture based on the view from my “happy place.” If you want to hear that lecture, you’ll just have to come with me…!
I can’t get enough of foreign travel, especially to Greece. I’m looking forward to leading CLSC 199 during Spring Break 2026 when I will be joined by Prof. Maddalena Rumor, but I’ve also been exploring new favorite places. Since 2024, I’ve been part of a team starting a new archaeological project in the region of Thessaly in Greece where we are excavating a different sanctuary dedicated to Athena. For more on that, check back on our department website for a summary of our 2025 season. We managed to bring two CWRU students with us last summer but we look forward to bringing more in the future!
What about you? Are you thinking about study abroad? I hope that you’re thinking about CLSC 199 as a way to get your feet wet. If you’re looking for a study abroad option in the summer, please think about our program to Rome (CLSC 326), which Dr. Everett Beek is planning to offer during the summer of 2026. After that, we are looking forward to the return of our archaeological field school (CLSC 318) in summer 2027, when Prof. Adkins and I hope to bring students to excavate in the sanctuary of Athena Itonia in Thessaly, Greece. The Department of Classics is proud to be able to offer some departmental scholarships for declared majors and minors.
If I somehow have not convinced you to journey to classical lands with us, please do contact our friends at CWRU’s Office of Education Abroad (https://case.edu/studentlife/educationabroad/) who can connect you with programs of various lengths and destinations. As my friends from that office tell my Athens students every year during our final class meeting(/party), study abroad is more than just pleasant memories and nice pictures. Your experience abroad will provide you with a host of marketable skills that will last you long after you finally decide to throw out that souvenir bottle of olive oil that you intended to give to your mother…
Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions at: mdh120@case.edu
2019 Summer Study Abroad Trip to Rome
Students spent 18 days with Drs. Evelyn Adkins and Mark Hammond as part of CLSC 326–Rome on Site: The Archaeology of the Eternal City.
2019 Spring Break Trip to Greece
Students spend spring break in Greece as part of CLSC 199 – Athens: Idea and Identity from Socrates to Byron taught by Professor Mark Hammond.
Summer 2018 Study Abroad Trip in Greece
Classics students spent four weeks in Greece, as part of a summer Classics course taught by Professor Paul Iversen, where they were able to participate in an active archaeological project–The Lechaion Harbor & Settlement Project. In addition to their field work, students learned about the history Greco-Roman culture and visited major archaeological and cultural sites around the country.
Summer 2017 Study Abroad Trip in Greece
Classics students Jacob Kordeleski, Dominica Rollins, Adam Doros, Aubri Swank, and Anna Anders spent three weeks in Greece learning about the history of Greco-Roman culture and gaining hands-on archaeological fieldwork experience with Professor Paul Iversen.
