CLASS-UA 3 Elementary Latin I
001: MTWR 9:30-10:45
002: MTWR 12:30-1:45
Introduction to the essentials oIntroduction 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 5 Intermediate Latin I: Cicero
001: TRF 12:30-1:45
002: MWF 3:30-4:45
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 7 Elementary Greek I
MTWR 8:00-9:15
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 9 Intermediate Greek: Plato
MWF 11:00-12:15, Philip Mitsis
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 267 History of Rome: The Republic
MW 2:00-3:15, Kevin Feeney
In the sixth century B.C., Rome was an obscure village. By the end of the third century B.C., Rome was master of Italy, and within another 150 years, it dominated almost all of the Mediterranean world. Then followed a century of civil war involving some of the most famous events and men--Caesar, Pompey, and Cato--in Western history. The course surveys this vital period with a modern research interpretation.
CLASS-UA 291 Cultural Heritage: Preserving the Ancient Past
M 3:30-6:00, Joan Connelly
CLASS-UA 293 Shakespeare's Ancient World
TR 3:30-4:45, Peter Meineck
Shakespeare’s plays and poetry are teeming with ancient mythological characters, classical historical figures, references to the teaching of ancient languages, ancient locations, and direct influences from Ovid, Virgil, Plutarch, Plautus, Terrence, and perhaps even Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus. This class will examine the literary, material cultural, and historical influences in the works of Shakespeare within the contexts of the ancient Mediterranean, the Elizabethan world, and their modern reception today around the world today. Shakespeare was one of the first working-class English people to receive a secondary education, which was steeped in the radical new subject of classics, and we will also examine what he learned in the new grammar school in Stratford-Upon-Avon. These ancient texts and artworks had been produced by people from all over the Mediterranean world including Africa, Greece, the Near and Middle East, Spain, and Italy, and those who created them reflected the multi-ethnic and cultural make-up of the region. The premise of this class is that these ancient works were always radical in some way and played an essential role in the creative process of Shakespeare and in the development of the Elizabethan theatre and beyond. We will be reading several plays in tandem with some of the texts and artworks they have been influenced by including Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and Othello, as well as several sonnets. We will also be examining the folkloric and mythic traditions of England and the performance techniques that were influenced by ideas about ancient drama. Students do not need any prior knowledge of the subject and will be required to sit a midterm, complete one paper and deliver a final report.
CLASS-UA 294 Cities & Sanctuaries of Ancient Greece
MW 11:00-12:15, Joan Connelly
What impact did built urban development have on local communities across the ancient Greek world? What was the relationship between sacred spaces and the growth and structure of Greek cities? This survey examines Greek urban and religious centers from the time of their foundation through the end of Roman rule. We will look at landscape, topography, archaeology, local myth narratives, and the ways in which religious, political, social, economic, and cultural forces shaped the growth and development of cities and sanctuaries. Special emphasis on: the relation between architecture and society, city planning and design, continuity of sacred space, construction methods and innovations, connectivity of sites, as well as the theories and concepts that inform the study of Greek urbanism. Micro-scale as well as regional trends will be considered along with the role of urban borderscapes as arenas for social, political and cultural interaction.
CLASS-UA 296 Special Topics
001: Classical Epic Transformed: Epics of Identity from Ancient Rome to the Iberian Atlantic TR 12:30-1:45, Julia Hernandez (same as SPAN-UA 461-001)
As Rome expanded during its imperial period, epic poetry became a literary space for authors such as Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan to explore evolving concepts of empire and colonization from complex perspectives. Just as these authors looked to the Greek epic tradition for models to legitimize their projects, so too would the writers of the Spanish empire look to Roman epic as a genre to emulate during its colonial expansion. This engagement with Latin epic served in many cases to promote Spain as true heir to Rome through the metaphorical transfer of imperial power (translatio imperii). However, just as importantly, epic modeled on iconic Roman works also became a resonant space for writers in colonized zones to negotiate, interrogate, reimagine, and invert new identities shaped by colonization. This course will explore how a variety of authors from the Spanish Atlantic world dialogued and continue to dialogue with the epic tradition of Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan. It will center the voices of writers underrepresented in the canon and in particular, those from marginalized communities past and present. It will place their voices in conversation with ancient texts through a process of parallel reading: relevant selections of Roman authors will be analized alongside epic works from the early modern period to today, ranging from the Neo-Latin works of Afro-Spaniard Juan Latino and the Guatemalan Jesuit Rafael Landívar to Manuel Zapata Olivella's postmodern epic novel of the Black diaspora and Giannina Braschi's epic of the Nuyorican experience. Students will consider not only how ancient works inform readings of these epic transformations, but conversely how reading such works from the Spanish-speaking world, historically under-recognized in classical reception studies, informs our rereading of Roman epic in turn. Works will be read in translation, no Latin or Spanish required (although opportunities will be available for students with knowledge of one or both languages to read selections in the original languages).
002: Living a Good Life: Greek and Jewish Perspectives MW 11:00-12:15, Michah Gottlieb (same as HBRJD-UA 422-001)
Central questions to be explored include: Does living well require acquiring knowledge and wisdom? What is the place of moral responsibility in the good life? Is the good life a happy life or does it require sacrificing happiness? Does religion lead to living well or does it hinder it? What is friendship and how does it contribute to the good life? Thinkers to be studied may include: Aristotle, Seneca, Maimonides, Glikl, Spinoza, and Levinas.
CLASS-UA 409 Ancient Religion
R 2:00-4:45, Barbara Kowalzig
The period from the beginnings of Greek religion until the spread of Christianity spans over 2,000 years and many approaches to religious and moral issues. Traces developments such as Olympian gods of Homer and Hesiod; hero worship; public and private religion; views of death, the soul, and afterlife; Dionysus; Epicureanism; and Stoicism. Deals with changes in Greek religion during the Roman republic and early empire and the success of Christians in converting pagans in spite of official persecution.
CLASS-UA 701 Socrates and His Critics
TR 11:00-12:15, Vincent 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 856 Engaging Early Christian Theology (same as RELST-UA 840.001)
MW 9:30-10:45, Adam Becker
CLASS-UA 873 Advanced Latin
MW 9:30-10:45, Matthew Santirocco
This course will focus especially on Roman elegiac poetry. Personal or subjective love elegy was, like satire, a genre that the Romans could legitimately claim to have invented. This course will read selected poems by the major elegists, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, as well as several elegies by Catullus, a precursor in the genre, and the short works of Sulpicia, the only woman whose writing has come down to us from classical Rome. At once highly sophisticated and deeply moving, these poems explore love not only on its own terms, but also in the context of recent Roman history (the civil wars and the transformation of the republic into the Augustan principate). They also explore love in the context of Roman cultural norms, which ostensibly championed a very different set of values, social behavior, and artistic expression. This historical and cultural context forms the backdrop of these poems, which at once challenge, exploit, and coopt it. The course will focus primarily on close reading and literary critical interpretation of the poems, with some attention to their historical and political background, the role of literary patronage (Maecenas and Messalla) in their production, their creative use of literary and mythological allusion, and the way they exemplify Hellenistic literary theory (Callimachean aesthetics). Prerequisite: CLASS-UA 6 OR four years of secondary school Latin, or the equivalent.
CLASS-UA 974 Advanced Greek
TR 2:00-3:15, Marko Mahling
Readings of several speeches from the major Attic orators (Lysias, Aeschines, and Demosthenes). The course also examines the role of law in Athenian society, procedure in the Athenian courts, and rhetorical education and training. Prerequisite: CLASS-UA 10 OR four years of secondary school Greek.