Autumn

Immerse yourself in real writings from Ancient Rome, and the long subsequent tradition of Latin literature. Readings this quarter concentrate on selections of Roman prose (for instance, by Cicero), with an aim to improve reading skills, discuss key concepts in Roman history and culture, and expand knowledge of grammar and vocabulary as necessary.  

For centuries people have learned this language to go deeper into the thoughts and worlds of Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. In this course sequence, you too can begin to learn this language. LATN 101 introduces the study of Latin. Course work involves reading Latin, writing individual sentences and coherent stories, formal study of grammar and vocabulary, and other linguistic skills as necessary. Throughout the course, students will encounter authentic Latin texts. Students who complete this course will be able to understand simple sentences and combine them into larger units of meaning.

In 330, the Roman emperor Constantine dedicated a city named after himself at the site of ancient Byzantion. It was also designated as New Rome and became the capital of the eastern Roman empire for the next thousand years; it subsequently served as the capital of the Ottoman empire, and today it the modern city of Istanbul. This course will explore the factors that led to the creation of Constantinople, the monuments with which it was first equipped, and the ideological reasons why the emperors chose to build a “branch-office” of Rome in the east. As the new city’s people originated mostly in the provinces, considerable migration internal to the empire must have taken place. How were these thousands of people supported and fed? Finally, the city’s monuments alluded both to those of Rome and to ancient mythology. The emperors spoke through art to their Greek Roman subjects in the east. In this course, we will learn to decode these artistic conventions against a background politics of demography, war, and food supply. 

This course offers a hands-on introduction to the field of digital humanities with a special focus on ancient Greek and Roman antiquity. We will explore concepts and methods such as digital presentation of text with markup languages, text analysis with programmatic manipulation, map visualization, 3D modeling, and network analysis. Throughout the course, we will take a critical view of the existing online digital resources for Greek and Roman antiquity. The course will include weekly readings and assignments and conclude with a final research project.
No advanced computer skills are required. However, students are required to bring their own laptops to class.

The excavation of ancient ruins – Troy, Machu Picchu, and others – in the 19^th and 20^th centuries solidified the academic discipline of classical studies. In Europe and the Americas (the “Western” world), these discoveries came to symbolize a modern period that celebrated “the classics.” Beginning with Heinrich Schliemann’s interactions with Troy and the Homeric epics in the 1970s, in this course we read classical ruins and texts (Homer, lyric poetry, Greek drama) with a view toward the various meanings they have generated in modern times. We survey classical reception studies for its attentiveness to the role of Greek and Roman antiquity in Western conceptions of national identity, race, gender and sexuality, and the performance of these onstage, in public spaces, and in personhood. Readings in English, course culminates in research paper. No prerequisite required.

We shall read extended selections from poetry writers of recognized importance to the Latin tradition. Our sampling of texts will emphasize writers of the Late Republic and Early Principate. 

Readings include tragedies of Seneca the Younger along with their classical Greek precedents and their early modern English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish successors. Students taking this course as a Latin course will read at least one tragedy of Seneca in the original. Students taking it as a Comparative Literature course will read at least one non-English tragedy in the original language. Students taking it as as a Classical Civilization or Fundamentals course may read all the plays in English translation.

Readings concentrate on works of Roman prose, especially Cicero. The aim is to improve reading skills, discuss key concepts in Roman history and culture, and study problems of grammar as necessary. 

This course introduces the fundamentals of the Latin language, and the Ancient Roman culture in which it developed. The focus is on developing interpretive reading ability, but other language skills are also employed to enhance the learning of vocabulary, culture, and grammar. This course is intended for students with no previous experience in Latin.

In this course we will read the Greek text of Philo’s de opificio mundi, with other brief excerpts here and there in the Philonic corpus. Our aim will be to use this treatise to elucidate the thought and character of one of the most prolific theological writers of the first century. We will seek to understand Philo as a Greek author and the nature and origins of his style, Philo as a proponent of middle Platonism, and Philo as a Jew in the context of Alexandrian Judaism. We will also examine his use of the allegorical method as an exegetical tool, and its implications for pagan, Jewish and early Christian approaches to sacred texts.