| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLASSIC 36A | EARLY GREECE | STAFF | This course is the first installment in a three-part series about ancient Greek society. The focus will be on political and cultural developments in the formative periods of early Greece in the areas of literature, art, religion, and archaeology. Classical Greece, the cradle of Western democracy, has its origins in massive Bronze Age palace cultures spanning the entire Mediterranean, which rose around 1600 BCE and then mysteriously collapsed around 1200 (Homer sings their songs), an intervening Dark Age of steep poverty and high mortality rates (1200-750 BCE), and a rebirth of commerce, culture, and the city-state (the polis) during the Archaic era (750-480 BCE), a time of increased trade and colonization and of greater contact with the civilizations of the Mediterranean. Our survey will end with the early Archaic period (600 BCE). Visual images from art, architecture, and archaeology will supplement selections from Homer, Hesiod, and the lyric poets (Sappho, Archilochus), as well as passages from later Greek and Roman authors who discussed these earlier periods. Quizzes, midterm, and final examination. No prerequisites. Non-majors are welcome. This course may be used to satisfy the General Education requirement IV (Arts and Humanities). |
| CLASSIC 45A | THE GODS | GIANNOPOULOU, Z. | Classics 45A is the first part of a three-quarter course on Classical Mythology. This class will be an introduction to the most important Greek and Roman myths, their historical and religious context, various interpretations and influence upon ancient and modern art, film and literature. Some of the topics we will discuss are: the creation of the universe, relations between gods and mortals, gender and sexuality, love, marriage, death and afterlife. We will use a standard textbook, but we will also read selected passages from primary sources such as Hesiod's Theogony, Ovid's Metamorphoses and selections from Greek tragedy. The course will make regular use of ancillary visual materials, especially computer resources. The grade for this course will be based on a combination of multiple-choice quizzes and short essay exams. Classics 45A is the first part of the Classical Mythology series (45ABC), which satisfies the Humanities General Education Requirement IV. |
| CLASSIC 99 | SPEC STDS:CLASSICS | STAFF | No detailed description available. |
| CLASSIC 140 | CNSPRCY & REBELLION | SNYDER, R. | |
| CLASSIC 160 | MADNESS ON STAGE | GIANNOPOULOU, Z. | In this course we will examine various modes of dramatic representation of madness from invisibility to full presence, spanning three continents (Europe, the US, and Africa), and ranging from the 5th century BCE to the 20th century CE. We will look at madness as a medical condition, a form of divine punishment, a sociopolitical weapon, a manifestation of hereditary guilt, and a sign of existential angst. We begin with tragic and comic portrayals of madness in classical Greece, where insanity is sent by the gods and felt as a subjective affliction barely observable through physical behavior and linguistic use. We then move to Shakespeare’s Hamlet and look at madness as mental aberration and as feigned posture. With Ibsen and Strindberg we are faced with the social ramifications of madness as a condition that afflicts the common people, refers to women in their rebellion against patriarchal society, and serves as a metaphor for diseased family dynamics or as a sign of retribution. Pirandello plumbs the depths of both tragedy and comedy by blurring the line between sanity and insanity and using madness as a political metaphor. Tennessee Williams updates Ibsen by treating insanity as a subject in its own right, enhanced by incidents from his sister’s history of mental illness. In Soyinka, the personal and the social are interwoven, so that individual madness becomes a response to social crises. Finally, Sarah Kane, who committed suicide in a mental hospital at 28, wrote bleak testimonies of her own battle with madness, staging embodied but nameless voices with all the auditory and verbal hallucinations of psychosis. Grading will be based on class participation, oral reports, an exam, and a final paper or creative project. |
| CLASSIC 170 | ANCIENT ATHENS | MILES, M. | The celebrated monuments of Athens, such as the Parthenon, the Propylaia and the Erechtheion—and some which are little known or even lost—will be our focus. We will see how the city developed, from a small village beneath the Akropolis into the seat of a far-flung empire, and the intellectual center of the Mediterranean world for many centuries. Special attention throughout the course will be given to the historical, social, political, literary and religious context of the monuments, art and artifacts we study: how people made them, and why; how the temples were used and what the public buildings were for; what the sculpture and vase-painting can tell us about Athenian values and attitudes. In addition, we will consider the history and ethics of the “rediscovery” of Greece and Greek art during the past two centuries. The architects and sculptors set a high standard against which all subsequent art in the Western tradition is inevitably compared, and their art serves as an inexhaustible source of inspiration. |
| CLASSIC 198 | DIRECTED GROUP STDY | STAFF | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | JARRATT, S. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | ZISSOS, P. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | PANTELIA, M. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | KARANIKA, A. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | GIANNOPOULOU, Z. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | CLAXTON, C. | |
| CLASSIC 290 | RESEARCH IN CLASSIC | CLAXTON, C. | |
| CLASSIC 290 | RESEARCH IN CLASSIC | GIANNOPOULOU, Z. | |
| CLASSIC 290 | RESEARCH IN CLASSIC | KARANIKA, A. | |
| CLASSIC 290 | RESEARCH IN CLASSIC | PANTELIA, M. | |
| CLASSIC 290 | RESEARCH IN CLASSIC | ZISSOS, P. |