| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
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| CLASSIC 5 | LATIN/GREEK ROOTS IN ENGLISH | STAFF | Studies in the formation and use of English words from Greek and Latin derivatives. Particularly useful for first-year students who wish to augment their vocabulary systematically. No prerequisites. |
| CLASSIC 36B | CLASSICAL GREECE | SANTORO L'HOIR, F. | Same as History 36B. This course is a survey of classical Greece society and its main cultural achievements, specifically in the fields of literature, philosophy, historiography, and art. Special attention will be paid to these achievements as a reaction or response to the major historical events of the period and to their overall cultural settings. Readings, will include selections from the works of ancient authors such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato and others. |
| CLASSIC 45B | THE HEROES | SOGNO, C. | Classics 45B is the second part of the Classical Mythology series. This course will concentrate on myths about ancient heroes, such as Hercules, Odysseus, Jason and those featured in the Trojan and Theban Saga. The overall goal is to understand the nature of the heroic, as depicted by ancient writers and artists, and to appreciate the ways in which the ancient Greeks used myths in order to interpret their world. The grade will be based on three exams. Prerequisites: the series Classics 45 ABC must be taken in sequence, therefore, students enrolling in 45B must have already taken 45A (or be currently completing 45A in fall 2007). The Classics 45 ABC series satisfies the Humanistic Inquiry Breadth requirement. |
| CLASSIC 75 | INTRODUCTION TO CLASSICAL RHETORIC | JARRATT, S. | This course offers an introduction to the theories, practices, and cultural status of rhetoric in ancient Greece and Rome. The art of using speech and writing to direct human attitudes and actions came to prominence under the term "rhetoric" in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. in Athens as a tool of democratic politics and a framework for organizing education, legal argument, and public discourses such as the funeral oration. Rhetoric was systematized as a theory by Aristotle and adapted by the Romans under both the republic and the empire. We will read major works in the ancient tradition, including Gorgias' Encomium of Helen, Plato's Gorgias, Aristotle's Rhetoric, and significant excerpts of works by Isocrates, Cicero, and Quintilian. The course will end with examples of Greek rhetoric under empire--declamation, city encomium, and political addresses--and Christian rhetoric from both Greek and Latin authors. Background will be provided by Laurent Pernot's lively new overview: Rhetoric in Antiquity (trans. W.E. Higgins). We will also read short passages from drama, poetry, and satire that provide insight into ongoing debates about rhetoric's cultural, ethical, educational, and political status. The course will be a combination of lecture and discussion requiring a few short writings, a take-home midterm, and a final exam. The short writings will be a combination of reading responses and brief attempts at imitating classical rhetorical genres. All works are read in translation.
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| CLASSIC 98 | GROUP STUDY | STAFF | |
| CLASSIC 99 | SPECIAL STUDIES: CLASSICS | STAFF | |
| CLASSIC 160 | HOMER'S ODYSSEY | GIANNOPOULOU, Z. | In this course, we shall read Homer's Odyssey in its entirety, with particular emphasis on nostos (='homecoming') and its ideological and socio-political ramifications. Among other issues we shall explore the importance of traveling, the practice of hospitality, the role of women and slaves in the Homeric world, and the nature of the divine. We shall then deal with two adaptations of the Homeric epic, Derek Walcott's theatrical version in The Odyssey: A Play and the Coen Brothers' filmic adaptation O Brother, Where Art Thou? |
| CLASSIC 170 | WOMEN IN ANCIENT GREECE | GIANNOPOULOU, Z. | In this course, we shall read seven ancient Greek tragedies with a view to seeing each one of the three classical playwrights deals with gender issues. We shall look at women as wives, sacrificial victims, murderesses, rebels, lustful suicides, and objects of pity. Plays to be examined are: Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Suppliants; Sophocles’ Antigone; and Euripides’ Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, and Hecuba. |
| CLASSIC 200A | INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY THEORY FOR CLASSICISTS | EDWARDS, A. | This course will focus on Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus (to be read in Greek by all students) as a vehicle for surveying some of the most important schools of literary analysis from philology through deconstruction. Given the topic, there will be considerable secondary reading required; students can be expected to be assigned a few in-class reports; and there will be a seminar paper.
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| CLASSIC 220 | THE MATTER OF AESTHETICS | PORTER, J. | This seminar will explore the materiality of art and aesthetics, as distinct from form and formalism (though we will entertain the idea of the materiality of form). The coverage will range from ancient to modern and especially contemporary thought, with an equally wide sampling of media and media-specific theories: texts, visual and sound objects, and mixed media that co-involve the senses, e.g., performance art. The seminar is open to classicists and to students from other disciplines. Classicists will be expected to read three works in the original, most likely Gorgias\' Helen, Aristotle\'s Poetics, and Plato\'s Philebus. Class discussions will be based on readings that will be drawn from the Presocratics (esp. Xenophanes and Gorgias), who coined the philosophical notion of matter, Plato and Aristotle (sel.), who resisted it, (briefly) Baumgarten, who coined modern aesthetics, Hegel (on sculpture), Delacroix and Baudelaire, who thought about pigment, lines, and surfaces, W. Pater (sel.), who developed modern sensualist aestheticism, A. Riegel on post-classical and Byzantine aesthetics, J. Dewey (Art as Experience), who founded modern pragmatist aesthetics, W. James (Essays in Radical Empiricism), V. Shklovsky (essays), a sensualist wrongly labeled a formalist, Merleau-Ponty (sel.), M. Douglas on matter as disgrace and defilement, Laura Marks (Touch, sel.), S. Stewart (Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, sel.), J. Rancire, (The Division of the Sensible and The Flesh of Words, sel.), and Rei Terada (essays). The final shape of the class will partly depend on input from students, who will be asked to contribute one class presentation and a final seminar paper of article length in any area of research. |