She uses a lot of critical theory, like gender studies. This year, intermediate Greek has more than a dozen, and almost all the enrolled students plan to take the third-year course. Intermediate Latin, which in years past was lucky to attract four or five takers, this year is bulging with 12. Mr. D'Silva, who grew up in East Africa and is concentrating on Greek, has also enrolled in Arabic at the nearby Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota. With that, he plans to travel next spring to the Moroccan interior, tracing the incursion of Christianity into the country along ancient trade routes.
Some students simply love languages.
Alex Plionis took eight years of Latin, beginning in the fourth grade, before arriving at Macalester, where he has taken up Greek, too. In other ways, too, the pull of antiquity remains strong. Benjamin Rubin learned that one day in the sweltering heat at the department's dig site in Omrit, in northern Israel. We're losing something. It frightens me.