@curtisdozier.bsky.social is an internationally recognized expert on how extremists and hate groups invoke Greco-Roman antiquity to promote their politics. He documents examples of such appropriations at his award-winning website Pharos: Doing Justice to the Classics.
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He is the author of the first book-length treatment of this phenomenon: The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate (Yale University Press, 2026). Dozier has taught at Vassar since 2008, after receiving his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
From 2018–2020 he produced The Mirror of Antiquity, a podcast featuring classical scholars discussing the intersections of their research, the contemporary world, and their own lives. From 2014–2019, Dr. Dozier served as faculty advisor to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans studying at Vassar.
On today’s episode of Ancient Office Hours, Dr. Curtis Dozier, an associate professor of Classics at Vassar College, discusses founding Pharos: Doing Justice to the Classics, his new book The White Pedestal, and how “historical accuracy” rhetoric often masks racism and misogyny.
His course on Classical Rhetoric and the Presidential Campaign has been featured on Vassar News and his work has appeared in Salon.com, the online journal for Classics and contemporary culture Eidolon, Public Radio’s Academic Minute, and on the BBC’s Radio 4.