Curtis Dozier, Assistant Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, received a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship for the 2023–2024 academic year to support his book project Hateful Classicism: Greco-Roman Antiquity and White Nationalism. Currently under contract at Yale University Press, this will be the first book-length study of white nationalist appropriations of Greco-Roman antiquity.

As organized white nationalism has emerged as a political force in the United States, Classical scholars and the general public have become aware that such groups frequently take inspiration from the Greco-Roman world. Dozier’s website Pharos: Doing Justice to the Classics, which documents appropriations of Greece and Rome by hate groups, has led to  Dozier becoming an internationally recognized expert on this phenomenon. He has lectured widely on white nationalism and Greco-Roman antiquity in academic and public venues in the United States and abroad, seeking to raise awareness about the surprising and disturbing relationship between white nationalist classicism and mainstream attitudes toward the ancient world.

White nationalists find support for their beliefs in the ancient world by identifying articulations of these ideas in ancient sources, ancient social and political practices that resemble those that white nationalists believe should be imitated in the modern world, and sequences of historical events that they believe serve as warnings or exhortations for modern white people. In each case, it is the prestige of the “Classical” that gives legitimacy to white nationalist claims that ancient thought and social practice should guide contemporary politics. “Hateful Classicism” advances our understanding of white nationalist classicism, and the challenge it poses for the discipline of Classical Studies, by bringing to light the work of these white nationalist “thought leaders.”