CLASS-UA 003 Elementary Latin 1
001: MTWR 9:30-10:45am
002: MTWR 12:30-1:45pm
Introduction to the essentials of Latin, the language of Vergil, Caesar, and Seneca. Five hours of instruction weekly, with both oral and written drills and an emphasis on the ability to read Latin rather than merely translate it.
CLASS-UA 005 Intermediate Latin: Cicero
001: TRF 11:00-1:15pm, Mikael Papadimitriou
002: MWF 3:30-4:45pm
Teaches second-year students to read Latin prose through comprehensive grammar review; emphasis on the proper techniques for reading (correct phrase division, the identification of clauses, and reading in order); and practice reading at sight. Authors may include Caesar, Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, Livy, Petronius, or Pliny, at the instructor's discretion. Prerequisite: CLASS-UA 3-4 OR two years of secondary school Latin.
CLASS-UA 007 Elementary Greek I
MTWR 8:00-9:15am, Mikael Papadimitriou
Introduction to the complex but highly beautiful language of ancient Greece--the language of Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, and Plato. Students learn the essentials of ancient Greek vocabulary, morphology, and syntax. Five hours of instruction weekly, with both oral and written drills and an emphasis on the ability to read Greek rather than merely translate it.
CLASS-UA 09 Intermediate Greek: Plato
MWF 2:00-3:15pm
Reading of Plato's Apology and Crito and selections from the Republic. The purpose of the course is to develop facility in reading Attic prose. Supplements readings in Greek with lectures on Socrates and the Platonic dialogues.
CLASS-UA 242 (identical to HIST-UA629.002) Greek History from the Bronze Age to Alexander
TR 2:00-3:15pm, Barbara Kowalzig
This course will trace the history of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the death of Alexander in 323 BCE. Emerging from the margins of powerful empires to the east, such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Hittite Anatolia, Greece during most of this period consisted of small, fractious, and highly competitive city-states. Yet the Greek world saw rapid transformation in all areas of human activity, politics, society, economics, religion, literature and the arts. Within the broad outlines of Greek history, we will study major historical and social developments, such as the structural collapse of the Bronze Age Mediterranean around the time of the fall of Troy, the spread of Greeks, Phoenicians and others across the Mediterranean; the emergence of the city-state and ideas of citizenship, civic community and identity; Athenian imperialism and the development of radical democracy during the Peloponnesian War; the lives of women, foreigners, and slaves. We will discuss the role of religion and the arts and a flourishing theatre culture in generating social identities and in problematizing issues that concern us to the present day, such as economic inequalities, gender relations, and not least the role of the individual in society. Students will read primary sources drawn from the Homeric epics, the Greek historians, drama and oratory, while also being treated to epigraphic evidence and recent archaeological discoveries.
CLASS-UA 291 Special Topics in Classics: Archaeologies of the Athenian Acropolis
MW 3:30-6:00pm, Joan Breton Connelly
CLASS-UA 293 Special Topics in Classics: Catharsis -- Greek Drama and the Emotions
R 2:00-4:30pm, Peter Meineck
In this seminar, we will be exploring one of the most debated subjects in the field of classics, the meaning and function of catharsis. Aristotle famously writes that pity and fear and other emotions produce catharsis and that this was the goal of Greek tragedy (and perhaps comedy too). But what is catharsis - purgation, healing, understanding, epiphany, revelation? How did catharsis operate in practice and why was it such an important part of the experience of ancient theater? We will explore the cognitive, affective and neurosciences on this subject as well as ancient texts and see how catharsis operated in other ancient performative contexts such as the Eleusinian Mysteries and so-called Corybanitic "frenzies." We will also examine the relationship of altered state to ancient performance, the shamanistic qualities of Dionysos - the Greek god of the theatre, and the enthralling stage devices used to promote catharsis, such as fascinating masks, haunting music and empathetic movements and dance. We will read several ancient Greek plays to see how catharsis operated within them and ask if catharsis is still found in the modern world today.
CLASS-UA 294 Special Topics in Classics: Love, Sexuality, and Friendship
TR 9:30pm-10:45am, David Konstan
Could lovers be friends in ancient Greece and Rome, or were the two categories mutually exclusive? How did pederastic relations, based on a difference in age and role, enter into the construction of erotic identities in the classical world? Through a reading of primary texts in translation, as well as pertinent studies of gender and the emotions, we will investigate the nature of affective relations in classical antiquity.
CLASS-UA 305 Intro to Classical Archaeology
MW 11:00am-12:15pm, Joan Breton Connelly
This course presents an introduction to the Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, examining the history and context of sites and monuments as well as the methods, practices, and research models through which they have been excavated and studied. From the Bronze Age palaces of the Aegean, to the Athenian Acropolis, to the eastern cities founded by Alexander the Great, the Roman Forum, Pompeii, and the Roman provinces, we consider the ways in which art, archaeology, architecture everyday objects, landscape, urbanism, technology, and ritual teach us about ancient Greek and Roman societies.
CLASS-UA 700 The Greek Thinkers
MW 11:00am-12:15pm, Laura Viidebaum
This is an introduction to central themes in ancient Greek philosophy and their literary background. We will discuss topics such as destiny, freedom, fatalism, contingency, necessity, the nature of human agency, and the nature of human knowledge. Authors to be discussed include Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and Chrysippus. This course will help you develop the skills needed to read ancient philosophers profitably on your own. We will spend at least some of our time lingering over fairly short passages, thinking about how to discern more clearly the questions being raised and the answers and arguments being given. We will also practice standard philosophical skills such as clarifying concepts, noticing distinctions, and analyzing and evaluating arguments.
CLASS-UA 701 Socrates and His Critics
TR 11am-12:15pm, Vince Renzi
Despite having written nothing himself, Socrates is—if not the most influential—certainly one of the most influential intellectual figures in the Western tradition, for it is with Socrates that “philosophy” seems first to move from natural history to an explicit concern for human affairs. Indeed, so great is the magnitude of this change that we continue to term earlier thinkers “pre-Socratic philosophers.” His stature is marked again in the name given to a distinctive form of philosophical literature, the Socratic discourse, and an approach to philosophical inquiry and instruction, the Socratic method. In antiquity, his thought, importantly, inspired Plato, Xenophon, the Stoics, the Skeptics, and the Cynics, beyond those thinkers stretching to influence in Rome and Judea...and four centuries before the presumed time of Jesus, Socrates had already suffered martyrdom for his idiosyncratic political, philosophical, and religious views. In modernity, his life both fascinates and repels the attention, notably, of Nietzsche; though criticisms of his mode of existence he had already endured in his own time at the hands of the comedian Aristophanes, among others.
CLASS-UA 871 Advanced Latin: Epic
TR 12:30-1:45pm, Alessandro Barchiesi
Extensive readings in Virgil's Aeneid and the other epics of Rome, including Lucan's Bellum Civile and Lucretius's De Rerum Natura. Consideration will be given to the growth and development of Roman epic, its Greek antecedents, and its relationship to the Romans' construction of their past. Study of the development of the Latin hexameter is also included.
CLASS-UA 975 - Advanced Greek: Philosophy
TR 3:30-4:45pm, Marko Malink
Readings from the dialogues of Plato and the major philosophical works of Aristotle.