(Permission required - Please complete attached permission form and see Department staff to register)  registration form

The Iliad of Homer recounts the tale of a great war fought by Greek and Trojan armies before the walls of Troy’s lofty citadel. This foundational epic of Western literature tells of gods, heroes, and magical places already part of a deep past when Homer’s work was set to writing, ca. 700 B.C. Does the Homeric story of the Trojan War have a basis in real events? Scholars have long pointed to the Mycenaean civilization, which flourished on the mainland of Greece in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600–1200 B.C.), as the inspiration for the Homeric stories. In this course, we will examine the archaeology of the great centers of the Late Bronze Age in Greece and Anatolia, particularly Mycenae, Pylos, and Troy. Our main aim will be to better understand the social, political, and economic context of this Late Bronze Age world, which may shed light on the possibility that a “Trojan War” of some kind actually occurred. The primary focus on archaeology is supplemented by readings from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

In what may well have been Shakespeare’s favorite text, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, humans change into beasts, plants, stones, and elements.  Similar transformations occur in Shakespeare’s works:  men turn to beasts, youths to flowers, women to stone, and persons dissolve into clouds or water drops.  Reading Ovid’s myths and Shakespeare works side by side, we will focus on such moments of fluidity when human identity slips into that of another kind of species or matter.  Is such shape-shifting merely the result of poetic and dramatic license?  Or is it indicative of a different way of relating the human to other forms of existence?  What is so special about the human species?  And in what ways do the ludic, fictive, and fantastic liberties taken by poetry and drama provide a productive arena for exploring the plasticity of human identity?

Texts:  Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Allen Mandelbaum’s translation),  and Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titus Andronicus, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, Winter’s Tale. 

Requirements:  Routine class exercises and two papers.

Constitution making reemerged as an urgent issue in the Twentieth Century with the transformation of colonial empires after World War II and the collapse of the Soviet empire near the end of the century.  Constitution making issues have made themselves felt also in the constitutionally more mature nations.  Even in the British Isles, for example, nationalist movements have prompted new constitutional arrangements.  And in the Twenty-First Century, as competition for control of Central Asia and the Middle East has re intensified, the written constitution has been hailed by some as the vehicle for changing long established cultures.  The most striking feature of constitution making in the last two centuries may be its uneven success when it comes to reforming if not improving customs, character, habits, and actions.  Is an explanation to be found by going back to what appear to be the roots of constitution making?

This course builds on contemporary scholarship to reconstruct what we may call the constitutional tradition as it develops in the main ancient texts, which are read in English translations.  The ancient texts are taken from Herodotus, the Pseudo-Xenophon, Diodorus Siculus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, the author of the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution, Aristotle himself, Polybius, Cicero, Plutarch, Augustine, and the codifiers of Roman law.  The course traces this tradition through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and the classically trained thinkers of the Seventeenth Century, following linguistic and other clues that carry one up to Madison and put the work of the U.S. Constitutional Convention in a somewhat new light; and it continues through Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century constitution making into today’s constitution making efforts in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe itself. 

In this course, we will take up questions central to a liberal education, that is, the education worthy of a free person.  Those questions are the makeup of the human soul, the nature of happiness, the connection between virtue and political action, the role of poetry in teaching virtue, and the connection between personal happiness and the polity to which the individual belongs.  Addressing such questions will establish a foundation from which to consider these questions as they are taken up by other great writers of later periods.

Along the way, we will hit some of the great moments in Greek literature—the meeting between Priam and Achilles in the midst of the Trojan War, the victory of the Greeks over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis, the Funeral Oration of Pericles and the destruction of the Athenian army in Sicily, Socrates being lowered to earth in a basket,  the story of Theuth, and  the rich understatement  of Socrates’ remark, as he decides to leave behind a simple city in favor of a city with philosophical leisure, “Perhaps it is for the best.”

Two short papers, one long paper.  We will read the following works in whole or in part:  Homer’s Iliad, Herodotus’ Persian Wars,  Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes’ The Clouds, several dialogues of Plato (Apology, Meno, Gorgias,  Republic, Phaedrus).

In recent years Greek and Roman medicine has become increasingly central to the study of Greco-Roman culture and intellectual history. The medical writers are, for example, profoundly important for the study of ancient conceptions of the body and gender, semiotics and hermeneutics, psychology and the "care of the self," not to mention the history of biology, pharmacology, and nutrition. In this seminar we will survey the major writers of the Greco-Roman medical tradition, including Hippocrates and the Hippocratic treatises, various Hellenistic medical writers, and those of later periods such as Rufus, Celsus, Soranus and Galen. Among the topics addressed throughout the semester will be ancient debates about theory and practice, intersections between philosophy and medicine, sectarian rivalries, the social status of physicians, and the complex cultural interaction between Greece and Rome as reflected in the context of ancient medicine.

(Permission required - Please complete attached permission form and see Department staff to register)  registration form

(Permission required - Please complete attached permission form and see Department staff to register)  registration form

(Permission required - Please complete attached permission form and see Department staff to register)  registration form

Intensive Latin reading course for students in the Post-Baccalaureate Program in Classical Studies.  We will read and discuss several versions of the Argo myth.  We will start with Ovid’s retellings in the Metamorphoses and the Heroides, then move on to Ennius' and Accius’ fragmentary accounts, Seneca’s Medea, and finally selections from Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica.  Permission of the instructor required.

This seminar examines the archaeology of Greek colonization from the Late Bronze Age to ca. 600 B.C. These colonies were highly diverse in their motivations, physical settings, and political and social structures, as well as in their relationships with mother cities and the new worlds they inhabited. Emphasis is placed on the colonial experience as a cross-cultural and negotiated process.

Second semester of Elementary Greek. Instructor’s permission to enter at this level. Completing the course does not satisfy the foreign language requirement unless it is followed by 2 more semesters of Intermediate Modern Greek.

Basic grammar instructions combined with simple dialogues of everyday exchanges

and basic vocabulary of topics like introductions, family, weather, everyday living, vacations, health etc. Use of a main book, short story book, a cartoon book, pod casts, songs and other audiovisual material to bring the modern Greek life into the classroom.

Second semester of Intermediate to Advanced Modern Greek for students with prior knowledge of the language. Instruction’s permission to enter at this level. Completing this course satisfies the foreign language requirement.

Review of Grammar, in combination with an assortment of original text from books, short story book, a cartoon book, songs, poetry, documentaries and other audiovisual material pertaining to contemporary Greek culture and everyday life.

Sophocles' tragic vision will be approached through two plays about major heroes of the Trojan War, Ajax and Philoctetes.

The translation and interpretation of Latin poetry.

We will read a variety of primarily poetic texts, discussing the opportunities and the problems that they present for the construction of a history of Latin literature. Advanced undergraduates are welcome but should first consult the instructor.