Majors: Students who are considering a Classics major are advised to take the appropriate level of Greek or Latin.
CLAS 145
The Classics & Conflict in the US
Common Area: Historical Studies or Literature
This course will look at uses of ancient Greece and Rome in American civic life and culture, with a focus on the reception of Classical ideas and models during periods of conflict in the US. This will include American engagement with the Classics in the revolutionary and constitutional periods, in the abolitionist movements of the nineteenth century and the civil rights era of the twentieth century, and in discussions about race, gender, and class identity in the twenty-first century.
CLAS 165
Refugees in Ancient Myth & Today
Common Area: Literature
An exploration of myths about migration and refugees in ancient drama and epic, considered alongside contemporary narratives of global migration. Special attention will be given to the 2015 migration crisis in Greece. This class will include a community-based learning component.
CLAS 188
Alexander the Great and Asia
Common Area: Historical Studies or Literature
Considers the political, religious, and cultural encounters between the ancient Greek world and Asia generated by the expedition of Alexander the Great and the interpretations of the story of Alexander found in different cultural traditions from antiquity to the present day, from religious texts to heavy metal music.
CLAS 199-F01
Digital Mythology
Common Area: Literature
Myths are a kind of traditional tale. Like any traditional story, they are multiform: there is no single, "correct" version. We can think of a mythology as the collection of myths that relates all of the (potentially contradictory) versions of many stories.
In this course we'll explore large collections of myths preserved in ancient handbooks of mythology and in scholarly commentaries on the major Greek epic, the Iliad. We will learn how to use digital methods to explore questions about Greek myth we could not answer from close reading alone. The course will emphasize both content and methodology. To the course title "Digital Mythology," you may add either of two subtitles: "Reading Greek mythology using data science" or "A first encounter with data science through Greek mythology."
CLAS 199-F02
Before Rome: The Etruscans
Common Area: Historical Studies
Ancient Italy was populated by many groups, the most well-known among them the Romans. But concurrent with the early 1st millennium BCE development of Roman culture in ancient Latium (modern Lazio), a people known to us today as the Etruscans was emerging in ancient Etruria (modern Tuscany). Many technologies and cultural traits of the Etruscans would later be appropriated by the Romans, somewhat obscuring them to a casual observer. The Etruscans, reaching beyond their homeland of Etruria, fostered connections not just with the Romans to their immediate south, but also with the wider Mediterranean world. Moreover, largely on the basis of their pre-Indo-European language, in the popular imagination the Etruscans are often characterized as “mysterious”. To that end, this course seeks: to explore the Etruscan culture based on its own archaeological remains, to understand Etruscan agency in interactions with other contemporary peoples, to analyze ancient external perspectives on the Etruscans, and to investigate how modern viewers have treated the “enigmatic” Etruscans alongside what is in fact concretely known about them.
CLAS 199-F03
Opening Classics
Common Area: Historical Studies
In this course, we will critically examine the field called “Classics” and engage in collaborative research projects that open up new questions and ideas about its future. As we explore using the field’s major methods of investigating Greco-Roman antiquity and consider the history of the field and its current and future state, we will analyze what areas of study Classics has included and what it has not, what work the name “Classics” is doing in making claims about the ancient world, and how the field has been shaped and used in particular times and places. After learning about how we know what we think we know about Greco-Roman antiquity and how we learn more about these areas, students will have the means and opportunity to formulate and pursue research topics of their own.
CLAS 222
Archaeology of Pompeii
Common Area: Historical Studies
Examines the ancient city of Pompeii, with particular emphasis on the houses in which families lived. Domestic spaces both reflected and reinforced certain family structures, and so the houses of Pompeii provide us with information about subjects as varied as the power of the father, ancient slavery, the experience of childhood, the role of women, and ancient notions of public and private space, all of which topics will be addressed in this course through an examination of material culture. For purposes of comparison, the course will also briefly investigate the domestic spaces of the nearby site of Herculaneum, as well as other Italian sites like Cosa and Ostia.
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