Classics

This course examines the nature and uses of Greek mythology in ancient Greek literature and art.

In antiquity, the city as idea and as experience provided a central trope for Greeks and Romans to think about their place in the world, their social and political organization, the relationship between culture and nature, self and other, morality, and history. This course focuses particularly on the presence of urban everyday life in classical literature and asks students to explore ancient representations through the lenses of cultural history and current critical approaches to the city. Our starting point is to think about what is ‘natural’ to us and put it at a critical distance: the ways in which the city has featured in literature and film in modernity. Students proceed to explore the extent to which these modern representations and their cultural context find antecedents in antiquity. Students pay special attention to urban space (house/home, street, theater, baths and barbershops) as well as time and occasion (city at night, erotic city, landscapes of disaster, routine).

This course offers a study of Latin rhetoric and stylistics. Topics include: rhetoric in Rome; genres or types of discourse; construction of discourse; parts of speech; stylistics.

This course provides an introductory survey of the history of the Greek world from the Archaic age to the death of Alexander the Great. The main trends and issues of this period are explored such as colonization, imperialism, war, political developments, such as the Athenian invention of democracy, and the rise of Alexander. 

The course provides an overview of Greek and Roman culture in the classical period. The emphasis is on history, literature, and mythology. The syllabus consists of both texts from antiquity in translation and modern literature on the subject. The course provides a professional basis for further study of antiquity, and at the same time addresses issues and problems around recent use of classical culture in Europe. The course discusses topics including important events, people, and developments in Greek and Roman history; recent interpretations and reuse of ancient culture; ancient literary genres and texts, and how these have been preserved; literary works through the reading of primary texts; important Greek and Roman myths and mythological figures; and antiquity as a historical period and its relevance in recent times.