V27.0003.01      Elementary Latin I                    M-Th 9:30-10:45            Danielle LaLalonde

Introduction to the essentials of Latin vocabulary, morphology, and syntax.  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.

 

V27.0003.02      Elementary Latin I                    M-Th 3:30-4:45              Brett Wisniewski

Introduction to the essentials of Latin vocabulary, morphology, and syntax. 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.

 

V27.0005.01      Intermediate Latin I                   M-Th 9:30-10:45            Andrew Monson

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. At least one complete oration by Cicero is read; other authors may include Cornelius Nepos, Caesar, Livy, Pliny, or Petronius.

 

V27.0005.02      Intermediate Latin I                   M-Th 3:30-4:45              Ian Lockey

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. At least one complete oration by Cicero is read; other authors may include Cornelius Nepos, Caesar, Livy, Pliny, or Petronius.

 

V27.0007           Elementary Greek I                    M-Th 11:00-12:15          Ian Lockey

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.

 

V27.0009           Intermediate Greek I                  M,T,Th 3:30-4:45          Raffaella Cribiore

The foremost goal of this course is to learn to read Greek prose with care and enjoyment. We will start by reading Lysias, Oration I (On the Murder of Eratosthenes) and will eventually proceed, if possible, to Oration III (Against Simon). Literary issues (e.g. Lysias' prose style and rhetorical devices) and social issues arising from the texts will gradually gain attention as the semester progresses. The class will take the time to review and expand knowledge of Greek morphology and syntax. There will be weekly quizzes.

 

V27.0100           Ancient Art                               M & W 12:30-1:45         Joan Connelly

History of art in the Western tradition from 20,000 B.C. to the 4th century A.D. From the emergence of human beings in the Paleolithic Age to the developments of civilization in the Near East, Egypt, and the Aegean; the flowering of the Classical Age in Greece; and the rise of the Roman Empire to the beginnings of Christian domination under the Emperor Constantine in the 4^th century A.D. Study of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum is essential.

 

V27.0150           The Parthenon                          Monday 4:55-7:25          Joan Connelly

 

V27.0143           Ancient Greek Drama                Th 3:30-6:00                 Peter Meineck

Of the ancient Greeks’ many gifts to Western culture, one of the most celebrated and influential is the art of drama. This course covers, through the best available translations, the masterpieces of the three great Athenian dramatists. Analysis of the place of the plays in the history of tragedy and the continuing influence they have had on serious playwrights, including those of the 20th century.

 

V27.0294           Poetics                                      M & W 3:30-4:45           Joy Connolly

What makes a poem or a novel different from every-day speech and storytelling?  Is there a poetics of every-day life?  What is a "good" poem or artwork and where do standards of aesthetic evaluation come from? Why include poetry and fiction in education?  How does literature engage in ethical and political thinking?  What is the relationship between literary criticism and rhetorical or legal criticism? We will study some Greek and Roman answers to these questions (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, Petronius, Quintilian, Longinus) and selected modern revisions or rejections of classical answers (Hume, Johnson, Malevich, Pound, Trilling, Williams, Sontag).   We will also ask how we define "classical" literature, reading a few texts from off the beaten path (Herodas, the Priapeia, Roman declamation, Persius, Lucian).  Are there ancient equivalents for kitsch, camp, the pornographic, or experimental art?

 

V27.0242           Greek History                            M & W 3:30-4:45           Andrew Monson

Expanding the traditional scope of ancient Greek history, this course offers a general survey of the period from the third millennium B.C. to Alexander the Great and his successors. It connects the Greeks to the civilizations that lay to the east and to broader developments in world history. The emphasis is on the archaic and classical periods of Greek history, when new experiments in politics, society, science, and the arts set the Greeks apart in important ways from other ancient cultures.

 

V27.0278           History of Rome: Empire            T & Th 2:00-3:15           Michael Peachin

In March of 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was murdered by a group of senators disgruntled with his monarchic ways. However, Caesar's adoptive son and heir, Octavian, was quickly on the scene, and in little more than a decade managed to establish himself as Rome's first emperor. However, since the Romans had told themselves for hundreds of years that they utterly despised monarchy, there could be no open admission that the Republic had now been replaced by an autocratic regime. How, then, did such an empire function, and do so for several hundred years? This will be the central question addressed in this class, and in asking and answering this particular question, we will gain an overview of the firs three centuries of the Roman imperial period – roughly down to the time when Christianity began to be the ‘official’ Roman state religion.

 

V27.0291           Entertaining the Romans                        T & Th 11:00-12:15       Michael Peachin

Wikipedia (USA) lists the following as its prime examples of ‘entertainment’: animation, cinema, theatre, circus, comedy, comics, dance, reading, games, music. The German version of this encyclopedia, for example, has no such category as ‘entertainment.’ Rather, there are entries on ‘popular culture’ and ‘high culture.’ Be that as it may, some of the forms of amusement just listed were, obviously, available to an ancient Roman; others were not. So, how did the Romans keep themselves amused? What kinds of leisure activity were there that might be practiced privately; and alternatively, how did groups of people come together in public for entertainments? Who put on entertainments? Who participated? How did any given form of entertainment function socially? Indeed, what do the leisure activities engaged in by the Romans tell us about the Romans themselves? We will try to gain a sense of this distant culture via its methods of diversion.

 

V27.0295           Honors Thesis                           To be arranged              Staff

 

V27.0646           Martyrdom: Ancient & Modern   M & W 12:30-1:45         Adam Becker

In this class we will try to make sense of a cultural practice that goes against what many
take to be the natural human desire to survive.The martyr ­literally witness in Greek ­is a
figure immediately recognizable within the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian traditions,
although the most well-known type is that of the early Christian martyr put to death by the
Pagan Roman state. The phenomenon of a person dying for the sake righteousness or voluntarily
submitting to death, especially as a form of social protest or bodily resistance, has its
parallels in diverse cultures around the world. This class will examine the theory and practice
of martyrdom in the West. We will begin with a close study of the development of the
martyrological discourse in classical, early Christian, early Jewish, and Muslim literature
and culture. The course will also trace how the concept of martyrdom is deployed in modern
culture in various phenomena, such as the Columbine martyrs, Martyrdom Operations
(suicide bombers), political martyrdom, and modern notions of holy war.

 

V27.0700           Greek Thinkers                          M & W 11:00-12:15        Phillip Mitsis

We will read a selection of texts written in Greek from widely divergent historical periods and from a variety of genres that raise questions about what we should value, how we should lead our lives, confront death, treat other people, try to educate ourselves, and, in general, ask how we can go about explaining the nature of the world and our place in it.  Readings, some of which will be lengthy, include Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, early Christian writings, St. Basil, Anna Comnena, Roidis, and Kazantzakis.

 

V27.0872           Advanced Latin: Letters             T & Th 9:30-10:45         Michèle Lowrie

 

V27.0973           Advanced Greek: Drama             T & Th 3:30-4:45           David Sider

We will read Euripides' Medea. The emphasis will be on understanding the Greek text and learning to read lyric meters, but there will also be discussions of the play's meaning and how it would have been understood in classical Athens.