About Us
Save Ancient Studies Alliance breaks barriers to education about humanity’s diverse past in order to advance intercultural empathy, equity, and cooperation today.
What is Ancient Studies?
We understand Ancient Studies as a coherent, cohesive academic and educational concept that consists of the exploration of the deep past of all cultures and societies across the world that are distant from us in time.
The new Ancient Studies intentionally brings together all fields engaging in deeper histories, and seeks people of all socio-cultural and socio-economic backgrounds to be active participants in the production and dissemination of knowledge about their and others’ deep histories.
The Value of Ancient Studies
The study of peoples and cultures distant from us in time is profoundly important in understanding humanity and has intrinsic contemporary relevance due to its emphasis on engaging with the variety, difference, and commonality between different cultures. In this light, Ancient Studies is a unique vehicle for producing intercultural empathy, which is at the heart of advancing social justice.
Vision
We envision a new Ancient Studies in which education in worldwide Ancient Studies is a key piece of formal education at all levels, with its goal set as the understanding of human cultures and societies past and present. The public appreciates allusions to the deep past in popular culture with a feeling of familiarity and connectedness in spite of difference.
To support this, all academic disciplines that focus on any part of the pre-modern world work together and strive to build on these four principles: equity, inclusion, collaboration, and public outreach. The lost knowledge of so many past cultures that has been painstakingly recovered over the past 200 years is preserved, expanded, and reshaped in a postcolonial mindset. In this future, the power of engaging with the global past lends appreciation for the variety and value of all human groups and serves as a foundation for social, political, economic, and technological progress.
Core Values
Equitable Programming
Fostering Diversity and Increasing Representation
As an organization, we believe that regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, age, race, disability, religion, socio-economic or professional status, everyone must be respected for who they are. Everyone has a right to high-level learning, and everyone must be supported in this journey. SASA is creating new ways to bring marginalized groups into humanities education. We take pride in our efforts to reach and engage underserved communities, schools, and scholars.
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Increasing Access to Education
Opening the Ancient World
In an ideal world, people of all backgrounds have complete access to education about the past. To achieve that vision, SASA breaks barriers to learning about the ancient world by providing open-access resources in multiple languages, offering all of our programming for free, and actively works to disseminate our offerings.
Enacting Change
Walkin’ the Walk
We walk the walk by translating beliefs into action. As individuals and as an organization, the SASA Team values inclusivity, compassion, and respect in everything we do.
Passionate Service
Giving Back
Our work is primarily done by volunteers who believe in the cause of spreading education about the ancient past in order to shape our future by giving back to our communities.
Digital Community
Local as Global
Since we believe the past belongs to everyone, we strive toward an integrated public, educational, and scholarly community across the world.
The SASA Arc
How we work toward our goals
SASA’s programming is aimed at a variety of audiences in order to affect change throughout the educational cycle and in multiple public learning spaces. We target K-12 through graduate students, professional educators to independent researchers, and interested amateurs to tenured professors.
1 - Public Outreach & Exposure
Harnessing interest in the deep past to raise awareness for ancient studies as the source of our knowledge about the ancient world.
2 - Education Support
Supporting formal and informal Ancient Studies learning at all educational levels.
3- Increasing Accessibility
Providing free online resources, educational spaces, and public scholarships to open Ancient Studies for all.
4 - Research
Studying the fields we call Ancient Studies with Educational Sociology & Marketing Research approaches to guide our work.
5 - Community Building
Bringing together all enthusiasts, students, graduates, and scholars of the ancient, premodern past worldwide.
6 - Supporting Scholarship
Re-envisioning and supporting scholarship as a lifelong pursuit for all Ancient Studies graduates.
7 - Advocacy
Working to influence decision-makers in educational and public humanities institutions to increase Ancient Studies offerings.
Supporters
Organizations
National Endowment for the Humanities
Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation
University of North Carolina's Humanities for the Public Good
New Jersey Council for the Humanities
Wenner-Gren Foundation
Society for Classical Studies
Society of Biblical Literature
Individuals
Dr. Mitchell Allen
Dr. Barry Kinzbrunner
Heather Rosmarin, Esq.
Dr. Barbara A. Porter
Dr. Jerrold Cooper
Dr. Christine Hayes
Dr. John Haberstroh
Dr. Charles E. Jones
Thomas Heagy
Philippe Rassalle
Ben Kacyra
Dr. Daniel Boyarin
Dr. Joel Christensen
Awards & Prizes
New Jersey Council for the Humanities, Katz Prize in Public Humanities, 2024, Honorable Mention
