Classical Studies courses below include courses in Latin language, literature, and history.
CLAS-101 Elementary Latin I
Offers study and practice in the grammar and syntax of classical Latin.
CLAS-102 Elementary Latin II
Offers study and practice in the grammar and syntax of classical Latin.
CLAS-111 Elementary Greek: Homer's Iliad
This course introduces the ancient Greek language and epic meter through the study of the Iliad. The grammar of the Iliad, originally an oral poem, is relatively uncomplicated, so that by the middle of the first semester students will begin to read the poem in Greek. By the end of the year they will have read a portion of Iliad, Book I.
CLAS-112 Elementary Greek: Homer's Iliad
This course is an continuation of CLAS-111, introducing the ancient Greek language and epic meter through the study of the Iliad. By the end of the year students will have read a portion of Iliad, Book I.
CLAS-201 Intermediate Latin I
This course combines a thorough review of Latin grammar and syntax with an introduction to the life and literature of ancient Rome, based on the reading of selected passages of Roman prose and poetry.
CLAS-202 Intermediate Latin II
CLAS-202CE Intermediate Latin II Topics: 'Cicero and the Enemies of the Roman Republic'
The career of the Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero spanned the last generation of the Roman Republic, a period of political instability and civil war. As the leading orator of his day, Cicero often used his rhetorical skills to thwart those who he believed were bent on the destruction of the Roman Republic. In this course, we will examine the role of public oratory in the political process in this period with a close reading of Cicero's speeches and letters concerning one of his political enemies (Catiline, Clodius, or Mark Antony).
CLAS-202RC Intermediate Latin II Topics: 'Roma Ludens: Comedy and Satire in Ancient Rome'
Could Romans be funny? Perhaps surprisingly, in a culture where seriousness (gravitas) and sternness (severitas) were praiseworthy attributes, Romans enjoyed theatrical productions adapted from Greek comedies -- from raucous and ribald farces to more subtle comedies of manners. They also believed that satire, poetry that poked fun at the vices and foibles of human nature, was a truly Roman genre. Moreover, both comic and satrical elements appear in a wide range of Roman literature. Authors may include Plautus, Terence, Horace, Ovid, Martial, Juvenal, and others.
CLAS-202VA Intermediate Latin II Topics: 'Vergil: Aeneid'
A study of the Aeneid with attention both to its presentation of the classic conflict between Greek and Roman value systems and to its controversial portrayal of empire in the Augustan age.
CLAS-202WR Intermediate Latin II Topics: 'Myth, Memory, and History: Writing the Past in the Roman Republic'
Livy and Sallust, the best known historians of the Roman Republic, viewed history writing as a moral enterprise, presenting events from the past as exemplary tales to inform and enlighten the lives of their readers. Their narratives thus are highly rhetorical, combining myth, memory, and history to reconstruct the past. Close reading of selections from Livy's Ab Urbe Condita and/or Sallust's monographs -- the Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Jugurthinum -- will lead to discussions about how Romans viewed their past and how they wrote about it.
CLAS-216 Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome and its empire can be viewed both as a measure of human achievement and a cautionary tale of the corrupting effects of unbridled power. This course covers the history of Ancient Rome from its mythologized beginnings (753 BCE) to the rise and spread of Christianity under the Emperor Constantine (312 CE). Topics include the creation and development of Rome's republican form of government as well as its eventual transition to monarchy, the causes and consequences of the acquisition of empire, the role of the army in administering the provinces and defending the frontiers, the image of emperor, the economy, and religion.
CLAS-218 Gods and Mortals: Classical Mythology
The wrath of Achilles. The travels of Odysseus. The blinding of Oedipus. The myths of Greece and Rome continue to exert a hold on our collective imagination. But for the ancient Greeks and Romans who produced these stories about gods and demigods, myth was more than a source of entertainment, it offered insight into matters of more pressing concern, from political strife, to mental health, to the nature of humankind and its place in the cosmos. In this course, we will come to understand the social significance of myth through a survey of some foundational works of classical literature, including Homeric epic, Hesiod, Greek tragedy, Plato and Vergil. In the process, we will learn about modern approaches to the interpretation of myth, and conversely, how the study of mythology has affected other disciplines, from psychoanalysis to anthropology. We will adopt a transcultural perspective, studying how and why the mythologies of Greece -- already indebted to those of the Hittites and Mesopotamians -- were reconfigured as they passed into Roman literature and ultimately into our own popular media.
CLAS-226 Bread and Circuses: The Politics of Public Entertainment in Ancient Rome
Bread and circuses (panem et circenses) was a catchphrase in the Roman empire that described the political strategy of controlling an unruly populace through free bread and public entertainment. Against a backdrop of Roman social and political institutions, this course focuses on the imperial ideology, aristocratic ethos, and cultural practices that underpinned this catchphrase, as well as questions concerning the careers of entertainers -- gladiators, charioteers, and actors -- who were at once celebrities and social outcasts; the rules of spectatorship at the games; the use of these games as a form of social control; and the logistics of feeding the city population.
CLAS-227 Ancient Greece
This course will trace the emergence and expansion of Greek civilization in the Mediterranean between the Bronze Age and Alexander the Great. Among themes to be explored are political structures, trade, slavery, gender relations, and religion, as well as the contributions of ancient Greeks to literary genres (drama, rhetoric, historiography, philosophy) and to the visual arts. Throughout we will consider how the history of the ancient Greeks can speak to modern concerns. Sources will include works of ancient Greek literature and history (e.g., Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plutarch) as well as archaeological and epigraphic evidence.
CLAS-231 Greek Tragedy, American Drama, and Film
The Greeks, beginning with Homer, saw the world from an essentially tragic perspective. The searing question of why human societies and the human psyche repeatedly break down in tragic ruin and loss, particularly in the conflicts of war and in the betrayal of personal bonds of love and friendship, fascinated them as it still does us. The most consistent themes that emerged from such examination are the tragedy of self-knowledge and illusion, the tragedy of desire, the tragedy of crime and guilt, and tragedy as a protest against social injustice. This course examines the critical influence of the three most important Athenian dramatists, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, on the works of Nobel winner Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and important filmmakers, who have tried to recreate the powerful atmosphere and impact of the Greek tragic theater or reworked the tragic themes of classical myth for their own purposes in the modern age.
CLAS-242 Kingdoms Human and Divine
How political authority is wielded is a theme of some of the greatest works in the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition: Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics, and Augustine's City of God. Authority exercised well gives rise to good order and human flourishing, but abusive authority results in the opposite: injustice, conflict, and ultimately destructive violence. In this course we will compare how these philosophers addressed the problem of political authority in the human realm with the theme of the kingdom of God in the Bible, especially as found in The Gospel of Matthew and The Book of Revelation.
CLAS-247 Knowing God
This course examines the following key texts from the ancient world that treat significantly the problem of knowing God and the mystery enveloping such knowledge: Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Plato's Phaedo, Cicero's Concerning the Nature of the Gods, Job, Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and others. Attention is also given to the different ways of thinking about the divine and human natures in these works, which are broadly reflective of Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian value systems.
CLAS-250 Intermediate Topics in Classical Studies
CLAS-250AR Intermediate Topics in Classical Studies: 'Art and Experience in Ancient Rome'
To see and be seen -- it could be argued that this was the very definition of Roman culture. In this course, lectures on the art and architecture of ancient Rome (ca. 300 BCE - 400 CE) will provide the backdrop for an investigation of the central role that visual culture played in the lives of different social groups, including bondspeople and the formerly enslaved, women and children. Special topics will include the funeral as performance, the house as a site of memory, the dissemination of images on coins, the spectacle of agriculture and dining, art and audience in the racetrack and public baths, representations of work by non-elites, and the Roman street as a place for making art.
CLAS-250DM Intermediate Topics in Classical Studies: 'Dante's Inferno Between Myth and History'
Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy is one of world literature's foundational works. In his 700 years old masterpiece, Dante poses and confronts universal questions that are still at the core of our daily existence: God, love, ethics, gender relationships, politics, social harmony, literature, the afterlife, and the relations between human and nonhuman forms of life. In this course, we will read, analyze, discuss, and enjoy Dante's great poem by focusing on the first of its three parts, the Inferno. In particular, we will be covering Dante's take on mythology and history.
CLAS-250EC Intermediate Topics in Classical Studies: 'Ecology, Crisis, and Renewal in Ancient Near Eastern Mythology'
Environmental crises like global warming, deforestation, and pollution are pushing ecosystems to the brink of collapse and endangering populations around the globe. Our present, though challenging to an unprecedented degree, is not the first time humans have faced crises related to climate, depletion of natural resources, and mass migration. In this course, we'll delve into the culture and mythologies of ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Levantine societies to see how they understood their relationships with their indigenous ecosystems, how they interpreted natural disasters and anthropogenic environmental destruction, and how they imagined starting over again after the end of the world.
CLAS-295 Independent Study
CLAS-302 Cicero and the Enemies of the Roman Republic
The career of the Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero spanned the last generation of the Roman Republic, a period of political instability and civil war. As the leading orator of his day, Cicero often used his rhetorical skills to thwart those who he believed were bent on the destruction of the Roman Republic. In this course, we will examine the role of public oratory in the political process in this period with a close reading of Cicero's speeches and letters concerning one of his political enemies (Catiline, Clodius, or Mark Antony).
CLAS-307 The Slender Muse
A study of the highly romantic poetry that launched a revolution in Latin literature, including such works as Catullus's epyllion on Peleus and Thetis and Vergil's Eclogues and Georgics, with attention to the new understanding of poetry shown in these poems and to their commentary on the social turmoil of the last phase of the Republic.
CLAS-309 Vergil: Aeneid
A study of the Aeneid with attention both to its presentation of the classic conflict between Greek and Roman value systems and to its controversial portrayal of empire in the Augustan age.
CLAS-312 Roma Ludens: Comedy and Satire in Ancient Rome
Could Romans be funny? Perhaps surprisingly, in a culture where seriousness (gravitas) and sternness (severitas) were praiseworthy attributes, Romans enjoyed theatrical productions adapted from Greek comedies -- from raucous and ribald farces to more subtle comedies of manners. They also believed that satire, poetry that poked fun at the vices and foibles of human nature, was a truly Roman genre. Moreover, both comic and satrical elements appear in a wide range of Roman literature. Authors may include Plautus, Terence, Horace, Ovid, Martial, Juvenal, and others.
CLAS-313 Myth, Memory, and History: Writing the Past in the Roman Republic
Livy and Sallust, the best known historians of the Roman Republic, viewed history writing as a moral enterprise, presenting events from the past as exemplary tales to inform and enlighten the lives of their readers. Their narratives thus are highly rhetorical, combining myth, memory, and history to reconstruct the past. Close reading of selections from Livy's Ab Urbe Condita and/or Sallust's monographs--the Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Jugurthinum--will lead to discussions about how Romans viewed their past and how they wrote about it.
CLAS-316 Ovid: Metamorphoses
A study of Ovid's ambitious epic celebrating change and transformative forces, with attention to the challenges it poses to traditional Roman values and to conventional Roman notions of the work appropriate to a poet. In particular, consideration will be given to the way Ovid's poem subversively responds to Vergil's work.
CLAS-318 Petronius' Satyricon and the Roman Novel
Petronius' Satyricon is one of the few surviving novels from the ancient world. Formed from a pastiche of other literary genres, including epic, comedy, and satire, it is a vivid account of the adventures of three men as they travel throughout Italy. Though fiction, and only partially extant, its realistic portrayal of Roman life offers a glimpse into the social mores in the early empire. Petronius himself was a member of Nero's court and the Satyricon a product of Nero's promotion of the arts. By giving rise to the picaresque genre the Satyricon's influence continued to be felt far beyond its own day.
CLAS-320 Bad Roman Emperors
Caligula was a god (or so he thought); Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Commodus dressed as a gladiator and fought man and beast in the arena. The historical tradition of Rome is replete with stories about eccentric and insane emperors whose scandalous reigns raise questions about the nature of the emperor's power and his role in administering the empire. A close study of Roman imperial biography and historiography -- the source of so many of these stories of bad emperors -- weighed against documentary evidence and material remains reveals the dynamic between the emperor, his court, and his subjects that was fundamental to the political culture of imperial Rome.
CLAS-395 Independent Study
