Graduate

This course offers a survey of the fundamentals of pedagogy for the ancient language classroom with an emphasis on introductory and intermediate instruction. Topics include methods of language teaching, language skills and proficiency, modes of assessment, course design, textbook selection, educational technology, online resources, lesson planning, effective presentation, support materials, and the principles and practices of classroom management. Activities include the creation of sample materials and mock teaching. Students who successfully complete this course will acquire a foundation in language pedagogy and be well prepared for introductory and intermediate instruction in languages such as Latin and ancient Greek. 

This two-quarter seminar is focused on situations in which written texts of the Roman period combined with other forms of material reality to produce distinctive cultural institutions. For example, Rome’s Secular Games combined formal prayer and sacrifice with theatrical and musical events, declamation as public entertainment evolved out of training routines in the schools of rhetoric, and the resolution of civil disputes combined complex acts of narration, normative description, and improvisatory skill. The seminar is meant to acquaint graduate students with a variety of literary and subliterary texts (some of which are likely to be unfamiliar), and to provide a first orientation to the scholarly bibliographies concerned with them. For the purposes of this course, the social and material setting that generates texts calls for as careful study as the texts themselves. Ideally, this approach will lead to a fuller appreciation of Roman institutional forms than a focus on texts alone. Students take turns presenting weekly reports on readings from the syllabus during the Autumn Quarter. During the Winter Quarter they prepare a substantial research paper under the guidance of the Instructors, whose expertise is in Roman history and Roman literature respectively. 

This two-quarter seminar is focused on situations in which written texts of the Roman period combined with other forms of material reality to produce distinctive cultural institutions. For example, Rome’s Secular Games combined formal prayer and sacrifice with theatrical and musical events, declamation as public entertainment evolved out of training routines in the schools of rhetoric, and the resolution of civil disputes combined complex acts of narration, normative description, and improvisatory skill. The seminar is meant to acquaint graduate students with a variety of literary and subliterary texts (some of which are likely to be unfamiliar), and to provide a first orientation to the scholarly bibliographies concerned with them. For the purposes of this course, the social and material setting that generates texts calls for as careful study as the texts themselves. Ideally, this approach will lead to a fuller appreciation of Roman institutional forms than a focus on texts alone. Students take turns presenting weekly reports on readings from the syllabus during the Autumn Quarter. During the Winter Quarter they prepare a substantial research paper under the guidance of the Instructors, whose expertise is in Roman history and Roman literature respectively. 

A workshop for Classics students who have completed coursework and qualifying exams, it aims to provide practical assistance and a collaborative environment for students preparing the dissertation prospectus. It will meet bi-weekly for two quarters. 

In this course we read the story of Medea as a means through which ancient authors across the Greek and Roman world, and after them, early modern, modern, and contemporary ones, explored issues of foreignness or otherness, gender, race, language, and representation. Ancient authors include Euripides, Ovid, and Seneca, and we read authors from Cherrie Moraga to Countee Cullen, Percival Everett, and Toni Morrison. Modern critical theory of reception from Hans Robert Jauss, Charles Martindale, and Simon Goldhill provide frameworks for discussion, and we will be attentive to the media of reception (literature, art, and film). There is no prerequisite for the class. Students enrolled for graduate credit in the classics program (and undergraduates who would like extra language exposure) will read material in Greek and Latin (primarily Euripides’ Medea, Ovid’s Heroides, and Seneca’s Medea) during the first three weeks of class. Translations in English will be provided for all students. 

The course will treat several problems arising in the historical development of Roman law: the history of procedure; the rise and accommodation of multiple sources of law, including the emperor; the dispersal of the Roman community from the environs of Rome to the wider Mediterranean world; and developments in the law of persons. We will discuss problems like the relationship between religion and law from the archaic city to the Christian empire, and between the law of Rome and the legal systems of its subject communities. 

The class will study the history of the Roman republic in light of contemporary normative theory, and likewise interrogate the ideological origins of contemporary republicanism in light of historical concerns. The focus will be on sovereignty, public law, citizenship, and the form of ancient empire. 

These two philosopher-teachers, Mengzi (Mencius) in 4th century BCE China and Epictetus in the 2nd century CE Greco-Roman world, both foregrounded an embodied ethics, and both were concerned with questions of living in harmony with nature, achieving freedom from external constraints, and dealing with the disruptive turbulence of passionate emotions. This course is a literary and philosophical comparative study of Mengzi’s writings alongside the Handbook and Discourses of Epictetus. Course readings are all in English, and no knowledge of classical Chinese or Greek language or philosophy is needed, but separate meetings can be scheduled for students interested in reading either of these texts in the original language. 

This discussion-based course will explore how conceptions of the ancient past have been mobilized and imagined in the political, social, and cultural discourses of modern Greece from the lead up to the War of Independence through to the present day. Among the themes that will be addressed are ethnicity and nationalism, theories of history, the production of archaeological knowledge, and the politics of display. 

Helen of Troy has been a source of fascination for ancient and modern writers alike, serving as a symbol of unattainable beauty and destructive femininity. This course explores the various portrayals of Helen throughout Greco-Roman poetry (epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy) and prose (historiography, oratory), as well as contemporary literature and film. Taking into account the conventions and historical context of each genre we will examine her character as it relates to questions of gender, sexual power, agency, identity, embodiment and social structures. All readings will be in English and include but are not limited to selections from Homer, Euripides, Gorgias, Ovid, Seferis, Marlowe, and Walcott.