GREK

GREK 45400 Papyrology and Early Christian backgrounds

(CLAS 45200, GREK 45400, NTEC 5100, BIBL 5100)

This course comprises an introduction to Greek papyrus texts with a view to their contributions to Biblical and early Christian backgrounds. We will read and discuss examples of different genres of documentary papyri, including private letters, marriage contracts, adoption agreements, leases, receipts, and many others. We will also examine documents which directly illustrate religious practice, such as oracles and formal decrees regulating and prohibiting religious activity. In general we will address topics such as the important contribution of papyrology to the language of the New Testament, the form of papyrus letters compared with the NT “epistle,” and the contribution of historical, social, and religious insights gleaned from the papyri to the early Christian context.

2024-25

GREK 34124 Athanasius of the Incarnation

(BIBL 42215, GREK 24124, RLST 22215)

Athanasius was born and reared in Alexandria where he received a thorough classical education. He eventually became secretary to the bishop Alexander, with whom he attended the Council of Nicaea in 325 and whom he succeeded as bishop of Alexandria in 328. For the rest of his life, both in his theological writings and in his turbulent ecclesiastical career, he was a fervent advocate for the Nicene formulations, resisting Arianism at every turn. His most famous work, the De Incarnatione, expounds how Jesus the Word, by becoming flesh, restores to fallen humans the image of God in which they were created. We will read a good part (about 60 pages) of this celebrated treatise with attention to Athanasius’ straightforward Greek style, his portrait of the logos, and his enduring contribution to Trinitarian theology.

2 years of Greek.

2024-25 Autumn

GREK 24923/34923 The Birth of the Gods: A Close Reading of Hesiod's Theogony

In this course we will read in Greek the Theogony by Hesiod, one of the earliest preserved literary pieces in ancient Greek and a text that became a point of reference for cosmogonic literature and thought in later centuries. We will conduct a close reading, commenting on both poetic/literary aspects and mythical tropes, and will read (in English) comparative materials from other Greek and Near Eastern cosmogonies, as well as some interpretive essays. Exams will be based on translation work as well as engagement in discussions.

2023-24 Winter

GREK 26123/36123 Antigone and the Making of Theater

This class on Sophocles’ Antigone will be held in lockstep with the upcoming production of the play at the Court Theatre, which will allow us to think about the construction of the play and its performance, both in its original setting and each time it is adapted and staged. We will attend rehearsals and talk to the director, crew and performers of the play as the play takes shape. We will also attend the production. Readings will include Antigone by Sophocles, as well as adaptions and theory on the play. 

Greek is not required for the class, but those who have it will be asked to read some passages in the original language. 

2023-24 Winter

GREK 34400 Greek Prose Composition

The goal of this course is to pick up habits from introductory Greek class: producing Attic Greek sentences and longer pieces. The most obvious benefits of this exercise will be thorough review of basic morphology and syntax as well as fine-tuning our grasp of the more subtle nuances of the language, which should pay off when we go back to reading the ancient Greek texts themselves — or teach them! While this is a graduate level course, undergraduates are welcome to petition to take it. 

2023-24 Spring

GREK 32800 Survey of Greek Literature II

(BIBL 32800)

A study of the creation of the canonical Greek prose style in the 5th and 4th centuries. Rapid reading and translation exercises. 

2023-24 Winter

GREK 32700 Greek Survey 1: Poetry

This course will cover the long life of ancient Greek poetry, touching on many genres in their first forms: epic and hymns, poetry that is theogonic, iambic, elegiac, lyric, epinician, tragic, comedic, dithyrambic and some poems that are practically unclassifiable. We will seek to discuss key moments, passages, and poems that give us entry to larger literary questions and themes. We will pay particular attention to details of genre, dialect, and meter, while also being attentive to the history of scholarship that attends on these traditions. We will read a lot of Greek.  

2023-24 Autumn

GREK 25123/35123 Aristophanes and the Culture Wars

Every culture has its wars, and Aristophanes’ Athens was certainly no exception. In this course, we will read selections of several Aristophanic comedies in Greek (Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Frogs), and consider how these plays engage with a number of issues that were cultural flashpoints: the workings and ideologies of Athenian democracy, contemporary intellectual movements and education, attitudes towards the Peloponnesian War, shifting notions of Athenian and class identity, and the manner in which dramatic poetry itself – from Euripidean tragedy to Aristophanes’ own comedies – related to, or even exacerbated, these issues. Along the way, we will consider how contemporary comedians (e.g. Trevor Noah, Hari Kondabolu) continue to put to use the same techniques and dynamics that we see in Aristophanes’ plays, and to what effect(s).  

2023-24 Winter

GREK 24523/34523 The Ecumenical Church Councils and the Making of Christian Doctrine

(HCHR 34523)

The Church Councils of late antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries) were huge conferences of bishops, priests, monks, secular officials, and emperors, who met to decide on the rules that would govern the Church and the doctrines that all Christians had to believe. They combined philosophical debate, criminal trials, committee meetings, and Senate procedure. Some were rowdy and acrimonious, while others were meticulously organized in advance, usually by the court. Some remain obscure, while others are the most thoroughly documented events in all ancient history and reveal in detail how the later Roman government operated. In this course we will read, in Greek, a number of fascinating narratives and official acts stemming from the most important Councils, including Nicaea I (325), Ephesos I (431), and Chalcedon (451). We will also discuss the Councils from a historical perspective to understand the complex negotiations that gave rise to Christian doctrine and canon law.

2023-24 Autumn

GREK 21700/31700 Greek Lyric Poetry

This course will examine instances of Greek lyric genres throughout the archaic, classical, and hellenistic periods, focusing on the structure, themes and sounds of the poetry and investigating their performative and historical contexts. Readings will include Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Theognis, Alcaeus, Bacchylides, Pindar, and Anyte. In Greek.

This course is appropriate for students who have completed GREK 20300 or equivalent

2023-24 Autumn
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