Undergraduate

The Senior Seminar is designed as a capstone course, and it is required for all Classics majors, whether they are writing a BA paper or not. The course meets once per week over two quarters (Autumn and Winter), for an hour and twenty minutes each week. Enrollment in both quarters is required. There are two sections offered each quarter (meeting as a single class); one is valued at 100 units, one at 0 units. Normally, the students will enroll in the section valued at 100 units during Autumn quarter, and in the section valued at 0 units during Winter quarter; but they may reverse the order of enrollment if need be. NB: students may only enroll in a 100-unit section once. 

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. 

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.  

How do public speakers deal with controversial topics when addressing polarized audiences? And how do different approaches affect or influence the reception of their words and ideas, and by extension the audiences’ understanding of the issues at hand? In this course, we will study some of the earliest examples of such articulations by examining how archaic and classical Greek poets addressed the most controversial issues of their times, ranging from Sappho’s musings on the class and civic conflicts of the archaic period to Aristophanes’ provocative forays into debates about identity, education, policy, and even poetry itself in classical Athens. Our focus will be on the manner in which these poets addressed conflict(s) as privileged practitioners of public speech, and how they controlled or manipulated their audiences’ interpretations and receptions of their words, anticipating the maneuvers of Classical era rhetoric. In order to do so, we will look closely not only at the cultural contexts in which the poetry was first presented, but also at theories of communication, conflict, and identity, genre and reception studies (e.g. comedy, invective), along with examples of contemporary music, poetry, and visual art that address similar conflicts. 

Reading a classic from manuscript: Cicero’s Laelius de amicitia from the ninth-century Krakow (ex-Berlin) Codex. We shall read from a high-quality color facsimile and consult in tandem the recent Cambridge edition (2024) by Volk/Zetzel. 

This course examines the development of the Latin elegy from Catullus to Ovid. Our major themes are the use of motifs and topoi and their relationship to the problem of poetic persona. 

The course continues to consolidate the foundations extended in the autumn course based on readings from Cicero. We shall cover a variety of poetry and prose from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, including selections from Boethius, Bede, Lupus of Ferrières, Nithard, and others. The authors chosen will all be significant for their efforts to reflect the highest classical standards.