DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

In this course we will examine, and learn how to write about, the role of Ancient Greece and Rome in American film and culture. Preliminary steps in this study will involve introductions to various historic eras of the ancient Greco-Roman world as well as important elements of ancient culture. Our emphasis will, however, not be analysis of antiquity itself but rather of American engagement with that antiquity, particularly in film. From reflections of ancient Rome in Star Wars to the adaptation of Greek comedy in Spike Lee’s Chiraq, we will examine not just how antiquity permeates American culture, but how popular art creatively and critically engages with Classical traditions. We will also consider engagement with Classical antiquity in some non-cinematic media as well, such as the graphic novel and even the architecture of the city of Chicago. Through writing and research assignments students will hone their ability to interpret and explain the role of Classical traditions in the modern world.

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What do we know of the world inhabited by the heroes of Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey? Do the poems describe a largely imaginary realm, or do they reflect a particular period of ancient Greek history—and if so, which one? How did the circulation of the poems help contribute to a collective sense of Greek identity over a wide area of the eastern Mediterranean?

This course explores the society, economy, and culture of Iron Age Greece with special attention to the Geometric and early Archaic periods, emphasizing what scholars have learned through archaeological discoveries along with study of the poems themselves. Topics include the excavations at Troy and other sites; contacts with Egypt and the Near East and colonization in the Mediterranean world; trade, exchange, and the technology of travel; literacy and oral tradition; political communities and warfare; gender and family relationships; religion, burial practices, and the art of ritual and commemoration. We will also examine some of the ways scholars and artists today are re-exploring  the poems and their enduring themes.

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This course will serve as an introduction to the history, culture, and peoples of the Ancient Greek world between the age of Homer (c. 7th century BCE) and the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE). Our emphasis will be on social, political, artistic, and intellectual developments across the period. We will pay special attention to the unique nature of ancient Athenian democracy as well as the politics and culture of other city-states, including Sparta. Our primary sources will be literary, but we will also examine evidence from ancient art and archaeology for unique insights into ancient people’s lives, ideas, and values.

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 a small city-state in central Italy, on the periphery of the older civilizations of Greece and the East Mediterranean, established military and political dominance over Italy; how it built a Mediterranean empire and administered it for centuries; how a long period of crisis led to its decline and partition 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.

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In this course we will study the myths of the ancient Greeks through the reading of ancient texts themselves, in translation. We will begin by studying Greek myth broadly, focusing on our very earliest texts, and then gradually narrow our focus to mythology in Classical Athens. The legacy of Greek mythology is timeless yet the myths themselves grew out of unique times and a unique culture so we will work to understand these myths within their original contexts, yet we will also keep our eye on uses of Greek mythology in the modern world, including in contemporary Chicago.

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This course will focus on spectacle and public performance in the ancient world. Topics discussed will include the Olympics, Greek drama, musical competitions, chariot racing, exotic animal hunts, and gladiatorial games. We will examine a mix of literary sources, material objects, and archaeology in order to understand the role of these spectacles in society at large. Although we cover a range of different types of popular culture from various times and places, we will discuss a number of common issues, such as, who funds these spectacles, who is in the audience, what kind of ideological claims are being made, and what can we learn from ancient popular culture about class, gender, identity, et cetera?

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The Amazons were a fantastical race of warrior women who lived on the periphery of the Greek world. They represented a world turned upside down, antithetical to Greek masculine values. The queens of the Amazons were powerful enemies to the best of the Greek heroes, coming into conflict with Achilles, Heracles, and Theseus. In this course we will discuss the place of the Amazons in ancient literature, in various artistic traditions, and in relation to cultures on the periphery of the Greek world where the idea of female warriors did not seem so impossible. Specific topics for this course include, Amazons at Troy, the “romance” of Achilles and Penthesilea, the Amazonomachy on Greek temples, cross-dressing in the myth of Heracles and Omphale, sons of Amazons, “historical” Amazons, and the modern afterlife of the Amazons.

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Sophocles’ plays, including Antigone and Oedipus, are enmeshed in conflicts sparked by Athens’ new democracy: aristocrats vs. democrats, philosophy vs. religion, freedom vs. control, controversies regarding women, foreigners, and slaves. We shall study the seven surviving plays and different major social and political issues facing Athens’ classical democracy. Except on one issue (personal freedom), Sophocles seems mostly to have written on the right side of history and liberal democratic values, which is why so many read him still.

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The scripts and fragments from plays produced in fifth-century BCE Athens in honor of Dionysos, god of wine and theater, are among the most enduring and powerful legacies of ancient Greek culture. Since their rediscovery in the early modern period, directors, translators, and adaptors have repeatedly turned to the poetry of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to reflect on political, ethical, social, and theological issues of their time. More recently, the plays have proved fertile ground for directors eager to imagine alternative ways of thinking about race, gender, and class. In this course, we will read a selection of Athenian tragedies, with special emphasis on their form, ancient performance context, and themes, as well as select examples of their contemporary reception for diverse audiences. All readings will be in translation, and students will be encouraged to work in groups to perform and develop creative responses to individual scenes.

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Ancient Rome is visible in Chicago—walk the city and learn to “read” the streets, buildings, and monuments that showcase Chicago’s engagement with the classical past! You’ll gain digital mapping and video editing skills as you collaborate on a virtual walking tour mapping Chicago’s ongoing dialogue with antiquity. With a combination of experiential learning and rigorous research methodologies, you’ll explore architecture, history, visual arts, and urban topography in this quintessential modern American city.

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Stimulated by current interest in decolonization and globalization, the study of ancient empires is now thriving. A major research tend adopts a comparative, cross-cultural framework to try to understand and explain commonalities and differences, which this course explores. Did the first complex territorial states we call empires emerge and develop in similar ways? What factors or institutions were crucial to their trajectory and success, and what theories have been proposed to account for them? What are the benefits and challenges of a comparative, multidisciplinary perspective, and what new kinds of histories might it produce? Many recent investigations compare Rome and Qin/Han China; others consider the historical sequence of empires in the Middle East, such as the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid Persian empires; still others analyze characteristics of imperial formation and rule in historically unrelated empires in different geographical regions and eras.

This course examines selected case studies drawn from a wide geographical and chronological range, with special focus on the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. We will examine different aspects of territorial expansion, consolidation and rule, including state ideology, bureaucracy, cosmopolitanism, urbanism, borders and frontiers, religion, and the creation and circulation of the imperial image. Readings will represent contributions by scholars working in different disciplines, including history, art history, and archaeology.

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. The seminar is intended for juniors with a reading knowledge of Latin and Greek. Sophomores and seniors may participate with departmental permission.

Although Plato is primarily known as a philosopher, he was also an extraordinary writer, of dramatic dialogues (in their way like plays), myths (including the Republic's religious myth of Er and the Timaeus' historical myth of Atlantis), speeches of many types (including the Menexenos funeral oration (something of a parody) and Sokrates' Apology (some including NU's Ken Seeskin have also considered this a parody), purporting to be his defense speech in court), history (of philosophy and political history), and (some believe) letters (the extant letters are fascinating, but may be mid-fourth-century forgeries). The course will consist of a critical reading and discussion of a number of Plato's short texts or excerpts of longer dialogues.

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This course is the first in an accelerated 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.

This course is the second in an accelerated two-quarter series designed to teach students to read ancient Greek texts, from the biblical New Testament to Homeric poetry and Platonic philosophy. These two quarters will teach all the fundamentals of grammar and vocabulary and lead students directly into a Fall quarter course dedicated to reading the New Testament in the original language. Thereafter students will progress to a range of genres from the classical and post-classical periods, including ancient Greek history, poetry, philosophy, drama, and more.

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This course, the first of the second-year Greek series, is designed to build fluency in reading Greek as students transition from the study of Greek grammar to Greek literature. This course will introduce students to the Greek New Testament, particularly the gospels, as we investigate how this unique genre functions. We will focus on the book of Mark, but our goal will be to develop enough proficiency that students will be capable of reading the other gospels at their will. While reading significant portions of Mark we will also begin a thorough review of elementary Greek grammar.

Some brief readings from the Greek classical period will be included as well, both to highlight the uniqueness of the prose styles employed in each period, and to prepare students for the transition into Greek 201-2.

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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 actual ancient literary texts. In this course we will focus on ancient Attic prose by reading from Lysias on the Murder of Eratosthenes as well as a Platonic dialogue. 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.

This course, the final of the second-year Greek series, is designed to build fluency in reading Greek as students transition from the study of Greek grammar to Greek literature. This course will look closely at selections of the Iliad, but out goal will be to develop enough proficiency that students will be capable of reading Homeric epic on their own. The aim of this course is for students to reach the level of understanding of Greek and familiarize themselves with resources so that they can, in the future, read Greek literature independently.

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Women play such an important role in the Odyssey that 19^th century scholar Samuel Butler thought its author was a woman. Odysseus’ survival during his return journey from Troy to Ithaca involves encounters with a series of powerful females—some beautiful, others monstrous—who may secure or jeopardize his homecoming, while his reinstalment as the legitimate ruler of Ithaca after a long absence depends on the willingness and ability of his wife Penelope to keep male competitors at bay. The course explores constructions of gender ideology in select passages across the Odyssey, with a special focus on negotiations of power and authority and the extent to which the poem has contributed to the construction and naturalization of patriarchal ideology. Special attention will be paid to the formularity of Homeric epic and the way digital tools such as the Chicago Homer can help us detect, analyze, and interpret formulas.

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This course will serve as an introduction to the study Greek lyric poetry, and it will principally cover lyric song from the archaic and early classical periods. We will concern ourselves with investigating the political and social significance of poetic performance in ancient Greece, as well as the relationship between lyric and other genres of performance poetry, especially epic. Since the readings for this class will showcase a number of Greek dialects, this course will also serve as an introduction to Greek dialectology. 

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. It helps lay the foundation for further study of Latin literature, as well as Medieval Latin, Renaissance Latin, and other Romance languages.

In the first quarter of the sequence students acquire knowledge of the essential grammar of the Latin language and basic Latin vocabulary, and develop an ability to read, understand, and translate simple passages in both adapted and unadapted Latin. In addition, the course provides an introduction to Roman culture, civilization, and history.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays will be devoted to grammar explanations, syntax and translation exercises. Students will prepare exercises and reading selections in advance of class and will be called on regularly to present results and to answer questions regarding grammar and vocabulary. On Mondays, students will take weekly quizzes and work on sight translation exercises.

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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. It helps lay the foundation for further study of western culture, as well as Medieval Latin, Renaissance Latin, and other Romance languages.

In the second quarter of the sequence students continue to acquire knowledge of the grammar and syntax of the Latin language and Latin vocabulary, and to develop an ability to read, understand, and translate passages in both adapted and un-adapted Latin. In addition, the course provides an introduction to Roman culture, civilization, and history.

Latin 101-3 is the third quarter of the year-long Elementary Latin sequence designed to introduce students to the basic principles of classical Latin grammar and syntax. In addition to the mastering of these basic tools, the course will focus on vocabulary acquisition and the development of translation skills and reading competency necessary to continue successfully in the second year. During the first three weeks of the quarter, class meetings will be devoted to completing chapters 34-40 of Wheelock’s Latin. For the rest of the term, primary Latin readings from Cicero’s First Catilinarian Oration will be assigned on a daily basis. Students will be expected to develop their translation and literary analysis skills in prepared passages from the original Latin text.

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The goal of second-year Latin (201-1, 2, 3) is the development of proficiency in reading Latin through the introduction of students to major works of Latin literature. During the fall quarter (Latin 201-1) we will read selections from works by Petronius and Cicero with attention to their interpretation and historical significance, in addition to the review and continued reinforcement of grammar and syntax.

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Latin 201-2 is designed to improve students’ understanding of Latin language by close reading of major poetic texts such as Vergil’s Aeneid, with special attention to grammar, vocabulary, and style. Class activities will include careful reading and translation of the Latin text combined with literary discussion and interpretation. The course also provides a systematic introduction to the basics of Latin metrics and versification

Learning Objectives.

Students will learn how to
1) approach ancient Latin texts in the original language;
2) analyze Latin grammar and syntax;
3) evaluate our source materials and different linguistic interpretations of Latin texts and their composition.

Prerequisites: Latin 201-1 OR by online Latin Placement Test.

For further information, contact the Director of Latin Instruction Prof. Francesca Tataranni (f-tataranni@northwestern.edu).

The third quarter of second-year Latin combines literary analysis with mastery of grammar and syntax at the intermediate level. This is mainly a workshop course, with discussion focusing on questions to and from members of the course. Though translation will be a component in evaluation, it will be a relatively minor criterion of success. The main topics of discussion will be how meaning and emphasis are communicated throughout the poetry of Catullus.

Though Latin 201-3 concentrates on language skills, it also develops skills of analysis that are foundational for the future study of literature in any language.

A grade of C- or better in this course satisfies the WCAS language requirement.

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The third quarter of second-year Latin combines literary analysis with mastery of grammar and syntax at the intermediate level. This is mainly a workshop course, with discussion focusing on questions to and from members of the course. Though translation will be a component in evaluation, it will be a relatively minor criterion of success. The main topics of discussion will be how meaning and emphasis are communicated throughout the poetry of Catullus.

Though Latin 201-3 concentrates on language skills, it also develops skills of analysis that are foundational for the future study of literature in any language.

A grade of C- or better in this course satisfies the WCAS language requirement.

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Starting with the first appearance of a strix in Plautus’ comedies, this course examines a number of portraits of female practitioners of magic – commonly but problematically labeled as “witches” in English – in different Latin authors across time and literary genres (Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Apuleius). From the young and beautiful sorceresses of Greek mythology to the elderly and foul hags of the Roman imagination, the portraits of female magical specialists who populate Latin literature under a wide array of descriptive titles (praecantrix, strix, saga, maga, venefica, etc.) are better studied as cultural constructs that depend upon and reflect particular social contexts and ideological systems. Although ancient sources indicate that men did engage in artes magicae, literary representations of male magicians are fewer and far less horrific than those of female sorceresses and witches. In this course, we will analyze and seek to denaturalize the gendered stereotypes at work in these portraits by reflecting on the underlying anxieties about bodies, identities, and threats to social order that shaped them.

Who was Achilles before his wrath took hold in Troy? At the end of the first century CE, the epic poet Statius set out to tell us, along with the whole story of Achilles' life. We see Achilles harassing centaurs in Thessaly, managing a rocky relationship with his parents, and passing as a maiden to avoid joining the war. Cut short by the poet's death, the poem leaves us to wonder how this Achilles could ever have become the Achilles of the Iliad.
A mere book and a quarter and long neglected in scholarship, the Achilleid offers an opportunity for students to develop real mastery. We'll read the entire poem and much of its bibliography over the course of the quarter and work in class to develop papers that contribute to our understanding of the poem. To help us sort out this dancing "Maiden Achilles" and his manipulative mother-goddess Thetis, ancient gender expert Professor Judy Hallet (UMaryland) will lead a class during her residence at NU this spring.

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This class aims to teach proficiency in reading medieval Latin texts in prose and verse, from a variety of periods and genres. Tuesdays will be devoted to a thoroughgoing review and consolidation of grammar, using Richard Upsher Smith’s Ecclesiastical, Medieval, and Neo-Latin Sentences. On Thursdays we will read and translate selected texts from an anthology—chosen, when possible, to align with the participants’ research interests. Students should aim to acquire two complementary skills, sight-reading for comprehension and translation for fluency and accuracy. Ideally, students should have had at least a year of prior Latin experience, or the equivalent in intensive summer Latin.

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