Recent graduates
William Cochran (BA'09 Kings, MA'11 Dalhousie)
“Being asked to join a panel at the 2011 Classical Association of Canada conference was quite an honour, and a confidence booster. After giving a paper and taking questions, it made me feel like I wanted to do it forever – it was a great experience.”
When William Cochran began studying at Dal, his best grades were in Classics courses, because he found he enjoyed them most. By the time he graduated with his BA in Classics, he felt he “wasn’t done yet with Classics or ancient philosophy,” so he enrolled in Dal’s Classics MA to study Plato.
Once there, Dr. Eli Diamond’s Platonic Dialogues seminar was particularly exciting. “We tackled about 10 dialogues, so we got a lot of experience reading Plato, addressing larger questions about Plato’s corpus too—how Plato interprets his own philosophy, whether he had a unified vision or developed his philosophy over time. Understanding Plato—specifically how he thinks it can be communicated through writing—became part of my project. That’s what I want to concentrate on in my doctorate and beyond.”
William says the professors in Dal’s Classics Department “are certainly role models for the scholarly life. Their passion, knowledge, and dedication to their students make the department what it is. They will push you to do your best work, and then lift you up and show you off to doctoral programs and funding agencies, ultimately giving you the best chance to move forward once your MA is done.”
“Another great thing about the department is that you get to feel you’re part of a tradition, a lineage, of scholarship,” he continues. “Dr. Diamond was taught by Dr. Hankey, and so on…You can trace back a history of supervisors, and it’s great to feel you’re being folded into that.”
“It’s also a very unique place to study ancient philosophy,” William continues. “Specifically its interdisciplinary approach—you can take courses reading philosophy in Greek or Latin alongside courses in ancient history and literature.”
“And in terms of learning about what the life of a scholar is like—attending conferences, writing a thesis, being a teaching assistant, grading papers, doing administrative work, all the various tenets of being a scholar—Classics at Dal allows you to do it all. It’s a very well-rounded degree and an excellent foundation for anything.”
After handing in his thesis on Plato’s Statesman, William was a teaching assistant at Dalhousie and King’s and taught Ancient History at St. Mary’s University. Then he spent a year teaching secondary school in England and applying to doctoral programs. William is now enrolled with full funding in the Ancient Philosophy PhD program at Northwestern University. He has also been awarded a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. At Northwestern, William will take courses in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy, maintain his ancient languages, and participate in the Chicago Area Consortium of Greek and Roman Philosophy. In October 2013, he and his fiancée, Lindsay, had their wedding in Halifax.