CLA 101-8 First-Year Writing Seminar: Endless Exile: Home and Homelessness in the Ancient Mediterranean World
The topic of exile—the forced abandonment of the place and world one calls home—captured the imagination of peoples across the ancient Mediterranean. The Greek Odyssey and Roman Aeneid, famous accounts of the predicaments of classical exile, were by no means isolated instances. These renowned poems were in conversation with narratives that circulated widely among neighboring Egyptian, Hebrew, Babylonian, Phoenician, and other ancient communities, in stories which not only produced echoes among themselves, but very likely borrowed from each other. In this seminar, we will read and discuss representative accounts of exile from the ancient Mediterranean world, highlighting their historical and geographical specificity but also reflecting on their treatment of common concerns and themes—such as homelessness and hospitality, longing and belonging, identity and otherness, hosts and guests, refugees and havens, pain and nostalgia, presence and absence, etc. While the seminar will highlight the historical and archaeological coordinates of those narratives, we will also reflect upon their relevance in discussing the very current reality of exilic life in today’s world.
As a first-year seminar, this course is meant to hone your abilities in the practice of academic writing. The activities for the seminar address this goal by implementing peer-review processes and exploring different writing techniques and sequences.
The course is a general history survey, starting with Rome’s humble beginnings and ending with the collapse of the Roman Empire. It will trace the story of how Rome as a small city state in central Italy, on the periphery of the older civilizations of the Near East and Greece, established military and political control over Italy; how it built a Mediterranean empire and administered it for centuries; how a long period of decline led to to the partition of its empire into an eastern and western half; and finally how the western half collapsed. In addition to this chronological narrative, the course will treat several key themes and concepts in Roman culture. The Roman military will receive attention, as will gender relations and public spectacles. Roman religion and the role of slavery will also be discussed.
This course provides an overview of the multicultural and transhistorical phenomenon of ancient Greek mythology. While paying close attention to the literary and narratological aspects of the mythical corpus (stories, characters, themes, perspectives, etc.), we will place special emphasis on their material and historical implications. This means that we will consider myths not only as imaginative tales whose plots may address universal questions or philosophical concerns, but also as signs of Mediterranean intercultural and economic transactions; as ornamental codes in everyday utensils, practical artifacts, and religious and public monuments; as recollections of major military tensions among kingdoms, leagues, and city-states; as religious and political arguments; as performative tools for dramatic and oratory practices; and as mechanisms to negotiate questions of identity in the complex geopolitical scenario of ancient Greece from the late Bronze Age through the Classical period. By exploring the heterogenous array of textual and non-textual sources that have served to preserve and transmit the tales, we will foreground the importance of integrating archeological findings, historiographic methods, and socio-political and cultural analyses in the discussion of ancient Greek mythology.
The course requires attending weekly lectures and a discussion session. Assessment will include active participation, quizzes, tests, writing assignments, a group project, and one mandatory visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.
CLA 314 Topics in Ancient Science and Technology: Ancient Medicine
We will study the theory and practice of Greek and Roman medicine, looking at ancient texts in translation, ancient artifacts and materials, and some modern scholarship. As a term project, students will learn to think like ancient physicians, diagnosing and prescribing treatments for patients from the Hippocratic case studies. During class discussion, we will engage critically with primary sources and examine the differences between ancient and modern science from a balanced historical perspective. We will also investigate the social, cultural, and economic forces that have affected the development of western medicine throughout its history.
CLA 395 Research Seminar: Classics in the Digital Age
The course will provide students with fundamental research skills through hands-on learning and in-class work on an individual project. Students will learn how to use reference tools and online databases allowing them to search, analyze and interpret ancient evidence ranging from literary texts to inscriptions, papyri and visual material. The course is designed to reflect current developments in the field of Classics. It therefore emphasizes digital approaches, including electronic tools for the study of ancient evidence as well as search engines that employ advanced computational methods.
GREEK 115-1 Accelerated Elementary Ancient and Biblical Greek
This course is the first in a two-quarter series designed to teach students to read ancient Greek, making accessible much of the world's most influential literature, from the biblical New Testament to Homeric poetry and Platonic philosophy. Since this is an ancient language there will be no spoken component and we will move swiftly through the grammar and basic vocabulary required to read actual texts. These two quarters will, in fact, teach all the fundamentals of the language and lead students directly into second-year courses in the New Testament, classical Greek oratory, and Homeric epic. Thereafter students will be able to progress even further to a wide range of genres from the classical and post-classical periods, including ancient Greek history, poetry, philosophy, drama, and more.
GREEK 201-2 Introduction to Greek Literature: Classical Prose
This course is the second of the second-year Greek series, designed to solidify the grammatical concepts learned in first-year while introducing students to the study of unaltered ancient literary texts. In this course we will focus on ancient Attic prose by reading from Lysias on the Murder of Eratosthenes and Plato's Crito. We will pay close attention to grammar and style, but we will also gain insight into the complexities of ancient Athenian culture, politics, and religion – especially in respect to the ancient legal system.
GREEK 301 Readings in Greek Literature: Euripides’ Medea
Under what circumstances might a mother decide to commit the unspeakable and willingly murder her own children? The range of contemporary retellings of the myth of Medea attests to the powerful resonances of a story whose contours originate in a tragedy composed by the playwright Euripides and performed in Athens in 431 BCE. In this course, we will explore how Euripides presented Athenian spectators with a performance that challenged their expectations about gender roles, heroism, revenge, and social ties, among other questions. We will read most of the play in Greek and put it in conversation with English translations of fifth-century BCE texts documenting the cultural horizon of expectations for the 431 BCE performance of Euripides’ Medea. Assignments will include a series of scaffolded projects, oral and written, culminating with an original piece of scholarship on the play.
Elementary Latin is a year-long course designed to provide students with the basic skills for reading, understanding, and translating both Latin prose and poetry. In the second quarter of the sequence students continue to acquire knowledge of the grammar and syntax of the Latin language, work on strengthening and expanding their Latin vocabulary, and develop an ability to read, understand, and translate more complex passages in both adapted and unadapted Latin. In addition to the exercises and readings included in the textbooks, students will see and read Latin as it appeared on ancient monuments, walls, coins, and everyday objects. By uniting the study of language and culture, this course provides unique insight into the daily life of the people who spoke Latin in the Roman world.
LATIN 201-2-2 Introduction to Latin Literature: Vergil's Aeneid
Latin 201-2 is designed to improve students’ confidence and fluency in reading Latin poetry through a close reading of Vergil’s "Aeneid." Class activities will include careful reading of the Latin text with special attention to grammar, vocabulary, and style combined with literary discussion and interpretation. The course also provides a systematic introduction to the basics of Latin meter and scansion.
LATIN 201-2-2 Introduction to Latin Literature: Vergil's Aeneid
Latin 201-2 is designed to improve students’ confidence and fluency in reading Latin poetry through a close reading of Vergil’s "Aeneid." Class activities will include careful reading of the Latin text with special attention to grammar, vocabulary, and style combined with literary discussion and interpretation. The course also provides a systematic introduction to the basics of Latin meter and scansion.
LATIN 310 Readings in Latin Literature: Sallust's Bellum Catilinae
We will read the Bellum Catilinae, Sallust's history of the Catilinarian Conspiracy of 63 BCE. Through this short but powerful text, we will study the characters of Cicero, Caesar, Cato, and of course Catiline himself. We will examine Sallust's historiography and rhetoric in comparison with Cicero's own accounts of the conspiracy. Sallust paints an unforgettable portrait not only of the infamous Catiline, but of Rome as it neared the death of the Republic: full of intrigue, betrayal, greed, seduction, espionage, and powerful men whose personal ambitions nearly brought the city to ruin.
