Carmen Denia

Class of 2017

I think choosing a Major or Minor is a little bit like choosing a wand in Harry Potter — you don’t choose it, it chooses you! I stumbled upon Latin early in college and before I knew it, I was taking all these humanities courses. I went on to pursue an MA in Religion and the Arts at the Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music. There, I moved forward temporally to Mediaeval Latin and Koine Greek. I now work as a theological librarian and research assistant for an art historian, so the academic training that I received through the minor is definitely useful professionally.

However, more than for its utility, I am most grateful for the Global Antiquity Minor because of how my professors and peers welcomed a fairly clueless, rather jaded college student (me!) into the Great Conversation and thus gave me a new life. Much of the humour (all the classics memes!), hobbies, beloved humans, and hopefulness in my life today began with the literature, arts, and inspiring people that I encountered through studying the pre-modern world. I truly hope that the reach of the Global Antiquity Minor at Yale-NUS will grow in years to come, so that many more professors and students will get to be part of, and be nurtured by, this wonderful academic community.

Thu Truong

Class of 2018

A member from the Class of 2018, I was a Literature major with a Minor in Global Antiquity. I spent my final year at Yale-NUS College working on Ovid’s Metamorphoses before going on to pursue a master’s degree in Classics at the University of Oxford, where I shifted focus to Ovid’s didactic poetry and examined the relationship between the motif of mirroring and female self-fashioning in his works. At the moment, I am taking a gap year to teach and improve my reading skills in ancient Greek, and I hope to return to academia one day for my PhD.

Joshua Goh

Class of 2020

** Joshua was an NUS student, and an ‘honorary’ student on the Global Antiquity Minor in terms of the number of course credits he took at Yale-NUS **

The Global Antiquity Minor programme at Yale-NUS was my second intellectual home throughout my entire undergraduate journey. Apart from giving me the opportunity to learn an eclectic selection of ancient languages, this programme has more importantly allowed me to experience the joys of reading ancient texts with a community of other like-minded students and faculty.

I have recently started work as a research apprentice at the History department of the National University of Singapore (NUS). Using the same care and precision with which I translated Greek and Latin texts, I now transcribe near-indecipherable handwritten manuscripts. Adopting the creative mind of an ancient historian, I now attempt to reconstruct the forgotten world of early colonial Singapore by means of a rather random collection of bureaucratic documents.

I have also recently published a paper in ancient history in the student journal, Global History, entitled “Origines Gentium: Mythic Kinships as an Archive of Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Ancient World”, which engages in a brief philological study of some of the various mythic kinships that mediated relations between the Indic and Hellenistic worlds after Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 BC. The paper can be viewed here:

https://www.globalhistories.com/index.php/GHSJ/article/view/301

Pei Yun Chia

Class of 2017

I have been putting the final touches on some international collaborative projects of which I am part: an annotated translation of Ovid’s Medicamina Faciei Femineae, and a related essay for a co-edited collection (co-authored with Prof. Green).

These projects both stemmed from the ‘Ovid in China’ venture (PI Prof. Jinyu Liu, DePauw University), which has received a Chinese government grant to translate all (yes, all) of Ovid’s work into Chinese. I became involved with this venture shortly after my graduation from Yale-NUS in 2017, and since then it has given me many late nights, new friends and academic contacts, and even the lovely experience of presenting at a conference! (see photo, where I was captured in action extolling the wonders of studying the ancient world at Yale-NUS during the 2019 FIEC/Classical Association conference in London, featuring the one and only Prof. Seo.) None of it would have been possible if not for Yale-NUS, where I worked in not only Latin but also Classical Chinese (hello to my classmates from Prof. Cook’s Classical Chinese series!).

I also have the joy of using my Latin to parse more (or arguably, less) quotidian things, for example as one of the anonymous and faceless singers in the video linked here (https://youtu.be/yduY4trQ8_8), and as the de facto linguistic consultant for the Cathedral Choir of St Gregory the Great.

Carson Huang

Class of 2020

I have recently started as a teacher of English Literature and Geography.

Salvete! My interest in the ancient world began with Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. Imagine my joy when I learned that Homer’s Odyssey was on my Literature and Humanities syllabus. This sparked a continuous and sometimes relentless pursuit of the classical world during my time in Yale-NUS, which culminated in this minor! Naturally, I applied for and was eventually offered a place to pursue a Masters in Classics at Cambridge University. Eheu! I was, however, required to serve my scholarship bond with the Ministry of Education and had to decline my candidature to work as a teacher of English Literature and Geography. I have been admitted to the National Institute of Education where I will pursue a Postgraduate Diploma in Education in January 2021.

In my spare time, I keep my Ancient world spirit alive by consuming memes on Facebook on the classical world: I particularly enjoy those from “Classical studies memes for Hellenistic Teens”. Besides meme-ing, I enjoy doing a low-stakes series of translating Vergil’s Aeneid, 4 verses a day, on my Instagram.

My Classics mind is always at work and seeks the tiniest allusion in the texts I read to bring me back to the amazing world of classical myth.

Koh Zhi Hao

Class of 2019

I have recently started work at a regional media company, IFA Media, based in Singapore, Taipei, Beijing and Bangkok, which specialises in long form narrative fiction series and documentaries. I have been hired as a writer for the narrative fiction department: I am doing some story and concept development for them and look forward to embarking on some screenwriting proper.

Greek mythology and the ancient worlds in general have always been fascinations of mine growing up, owing in no small part to the films and video games that remixed those stories and captured my imagination. Reading The Odyssey in Lit-Hums 1 and getting a chance to deep dive into Homer’s Iliad in the ‘Ancient Epic and Gangster Film’ course led me well and truly down this rabbit hole. I think the enduring longevity of these myths and tragedies pays testament to their quality and relevance in our world.

My knowledge of Euripides, Sophocles, Aristotle (Poetics), and ancient myths in general is serving me very well in my new role!

Vincent Lee

Class of 2019

I have just started a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada.

I am interested in the congruences and disparities between the classical Indian Buddhist and early modern European philosophical traditions, with particular regards to how their metaphysics bear differently on common notions like substancehood and selfhood. Previously, my undergraduate thesis brought Spinoza, a substance monist, and Nāgārjuna, an anti-foundationalist, into dialogue with one another on the relationship between causes and concepts.

Nicholas Lua

Class of 2019

Nicholas is currently pursuing an MA in Global and Interdisciplinary History at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.

He continues to work on improving his Sanskrit and Old Javanese, so that he might write his MA thesis on Buddhist kingship in ancient Southeast Asia. He hasn’t forgotten his Latin, either. Most recently, he’s writing a paper on a translation of the Georgics made in WWII Singapore.

Coco Cao Jinglu

Class of 2019

Getting introduced to the world of Classics is the defining experience of my college life. Guided by insightful professors, I have come to understand how many different masks power and money can put on. This knowledge reminds me to keep my suspicions when confronted with boiling political movements, complex economic schemes or mesmerising rhetoric. I believe it helps me become a better person and a more responsible global citizen.

Adila Sayyed

Class of 2019

I chose this minor because I love History!! But also I realised that i was only taking classes in more recent history like 18-19th c. I wanted to explore beyond this era and study the antiquity, an aspect of history that has fascinated me as a child.

Tay Jun Hao

Class of 2019

I love archaeology and ancient history! Beyond that, I love taking ancient language courses at Yale-NUS from the brilliant professors we have in the ancient worlds cluster. , These language learning opportunities provided me with various gateways to examine and experience various aspects and traditions of different ancient cultures and traditions which i had been unable to pursue before. To quote a maxim from the Analects of Confucius, 學而時習之，不亦悅乎, this immersive learning journey with the Global Antiquities Minor has been, and will continue to be happy and fruitful for me.

Sherice Ngaserin

Class of 2018

My interest in Classical Indian and Ancient Greek philosophy started with the Common Curriculum, and only grew from there after taking electives in those areas. I had very supportive professors who advised me to learn some ancient languages so I could read the original texts. At first, I saw language-learning as a means to an end. But it grew into an unexpected obsession with Indo-European historical linguistics (Latin is next on the list!). The Global Antiquity minor captures all of my academic interests; I was thrilled to sign up for it!