| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| CLASSIC 36A | EARLY GREECE | PORTER, J. | 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 37B | ROMAN EMPIRE | ZISSOS, P. | The course is a survey of some of the highlights of Roman civilization during the early centuries of the Roman empire (end of the first century BCE to the third century CE). In this period, the Roman world was ruled by emperors who increasingly came to have absolute power. We will look not only at political history, but also at social history, literature, art and architecture and religion. The course will consider a number of questions, including the political and social consequences of living under absolute an absolute ruler - especially when, as was often the case, he was unbalanced. This is the period of "bread and circuses" in which the emperors bought off the lower classes by providing the grain dole and spectacular free entertainment such as chariot races and gladiatorial contests. We will also look at how the emergence of Christianity affected the Roman world, and how complex social systems and entrenched institutions such as slavery evolved over time. The early centuries of the empire were a time of great prosperity in which Roman power reached its zenith; it was a period of relative stability but also, in some respects, a time of decadence, which has been a source of both admiration and loathing for almost all subsequent ages, including our own. |
| CLASSIC 45B | THE HEROES | KARANIKA, A. | 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 for this course will be based on five exams, each of which will have a combination of multiple-choice questions and short essay questions. |
| CLASSIC 99 | SPEC STDS:CLASSICS | STAFF | |
| CLASSIC 170 | PAGAN ICONOGRAPHY | KENNEDY-QUIGLE, S. | Pagan Iconography in Early Christian Art. This course will consider the survival of pagan imagery in early Christian art (ca. 300-700 C.E.). As a product of Late Antiquity, Christian art was necessarily influenced by contemporary Greco-Roman visual culture. Our aim will be to identify examples of this phenomenon and to consider how and why distinct components of the pre-existing pagan visual language was chosen, altered/re-contextualized, and understood by Christian patrons, artists, and audiences. Prior exposure to the art and/or civilizations of Late Antiquity, Rome, Greece, and/or Egypt is helpful, but not required or presumed. Course requirements include participation in class discussions relative to required readings, a research paper, and midterm and final exams. |
| CLASSIC 170 | PAGANS & CHRISTIANS | HAMMAD, J. | In this course we will examine the role played by traditional Roman culture in the formation of Christian identity from the Apostolic Age (33-100) to the years shortly after the reign of Emperor Theodosius (379-395), under whom Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Throughout this period, the influence of Roman religion and culture was critical to the development of Christian self-awareness both in terms of the counterpoint offered by the creation of a ‘pagan’ other (who among other things, was deemed responsible for the historical persecution of Christians, itself an increasingly important feature of Christian identity by the late fourth century), as well as the opportunities for advancement that came with embracing certain elements of Roman tradition; while parts of Roman culture were crucially rejected as incompatible with Christianity, the Empire also became Christian partly because Christianity became sufficiently Roman. Our focus will be on analyzing representations of acceptance and rejection, inclusion and exclusion, preservation and repudiation, in a wide array of mostly Christian texts from throughout the first four centuries CE. We will find that many of these representations have had a lasting influence on notions of early and modern Christian identity and we will consult a range of current scholarship to explore opposing and sometimes controversial theoretical approaches to their interpretation. |
| CLASSIC 192A | SENIOR CAPSTONE | STAFF | Under the guidance of a faculty mentor, majors design and execute a senior project. This project may be a research paper, dramatic production, school curriculum, etc. All projects must be approved by the faculty mentor. Prerequisite: satisfactory completion of the lower-division writing requirement. 192A: In-progress grading. |
| CLASSIC 200A | ODYSSEAN NARRATIVES | GIANNOPOULOU, Z. | This course explores the ways in which literary texts and films of the late 20th and the early 21st century rewrite Homer’s Odyssey and represent nostos as a journey through time and space. Which temporal and spatial configurations do prose texts and films of this period use in their treatment of homecoming and what, if anything, is postmodern about them? How is the revenant’s identity pieced together through references to time and space? We will consider the binary oppositions mobilized by the representation of time, such as continuity versus discontinuity, rationalization versus contingency, structure versus event, determinism versus chance. We will look at spatial indeterminacy, the spatial parameters of the enframed image (mise-en-cadre), memory and “psychical topography.” Finally, we will ponder how Homer and the Odyssey with their own peculiar relation to time and space figure in contemporary literary and cinematic narratives of the epic. |
| CLASSIC 220 | EDUCATION ROMAN EMP | SALZMAN, M. | This class examines the role of education in late antiquity. Readings in Latin will focus on the ways in which education happened in late antiquity, and how education shaped late Roman texts and views of knowledge, religion, and society. Topics include the role of education in mediating between Christianity and classical culture; the structures of elite education; the philosophical schools and their influence.
This course is a team-taught video-conferenced seminar, featuring lectures by faculty from UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, and University of Redlands. Each week there will be a video-conferenced lecture and shared discussion with faculty and students at UCSB, UCI and UCR. In the second half of the seminar, the camera is turned off and we will focus on the Latin texts relevant to the seminar, with special attention paid to the role of letters and letter writing in education. Texts include selections from Quintilian, Institutes; Augustine’s Confessions; and the Letters of Cicero, Pliny, Jerome, and Symmachus.
Professor Salzman will make special arrangements to teach at UCR and at UCI.
The first class session will meet at UCR, in Surge 170. For additional questions, contact Michele.salzman@ucr.edu |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | ZISSOS, P. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | PORTER, J. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | PANTELIA, M. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | GIANNOPOULOU, Z. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | CLAXTON, C. | |
| CLASSIC 280 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | KARANIKA, A. | |
| 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 | PORTER, J. | |
| CLASSIC 290 | RESEARCH IN CLASSIC | ZISSOS, P. | |