“Serving the public good” is the motto and a strategic goal of many an American research university. In this lecture, Joy asks: what public do humanistic scholars serve, how do we define the public and its good, and how does and how might our study contribute to this project? Thinking critically about the tradition of research on the ancient Mediterranean, Joy’s own field, she makes the case for a planetary frame for humanistic study whose fields of activity are the global and the local. This frame resolves an intractable tension in academia today, where institutions proudly recruit students and faculty from all over the world but retain disciplinary divisions that reflect the national borders and imperial power map of two centuries ago.