These courses have been/will be offered in other years.

116-Greek History and Philosophy: Origins of Western Culture. Aegean and Greek archaeological, historical, literary and philosophical texts, with emphasis on those ideas formative of Western culture. The development and transformations of these ideas as reflected in selected texts from the early Christian era, the Enlightenment or the Modern Age. The rise of individualism and exploitation, the relation of theology to the ordering of experience, and how psyche both forms and is formed by its relationships to community, nature and god(s). (Also listed as History 116 and Philosophy 116.) (Meets the Alternative Perspectives: A requirement.)  2 units - Dobson, Riker. (Not offered 2004-2005)  

Partly replaced in 2007-08 by 116-Greek Language and Philosophy. Introduction to ancient Greek language and philosophy in the context of Greek culture. Presocratics, Plato and Aristotle in relation to Homer, drama, emergence of democratic Athens, and etymological and grammatical structures of the language. Investigation of Greek concepts of language extends into modern philosophy, revealing how they both influence and are transformed by Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger. With the second block of CL 101, meets the college language requirement. 2 units - Dobson, Riker. Meets the West in Time requirement.

114: Goddesses, Heroes, Sages and Statesmen: An Introduction to Greece and Rome. An introduction to ancient Greek and Roman cultures through readings of original sources and some study of the original languages. How human beings conceived the order of nature and culture and the sacred and secular in these periods constitutes the common inheritance of Western culture and predisposes views of self and individual in contemporary Western thought. Emphasis on how these cultures understood the destructive and creative powers of chaos and what forms of order they thought best for human beings. Block 1 will include selections from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Hesiod's Theogony, the Presocratics, the ancient Greek dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, Aristotle's Poetics and Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus. Block 2 will include selections from the statesmen Cicero and Caesar, the historian Sallust and Livy, and lyric and epic poetry of Lucretius, Catullus, Vergil, Horace and Ovid. Prerequisite: FYE Course, Freshmen Only. (Also listed as History 114.) 1 unit  —  Dobson, FitzGibbon.

125-Ancient Multicultures. Survey of ancient history as an arena of cultural contact between different ethnic, religious and cultural communities.  Emphasis on the Persian Empire as "other" to Greeks and Jews, on Alexandria as a "melting pot" or "salad bowl," and on the Greco-Roman society of later antiquity as locus of changing identities.  Mixed and dialogical cultural forms such as History, New Comedy, Pastoral, Apocalypse, Romance, Acts, and Gospel.  Reading selected from Herodotus, the Bible, Plautus, Theocritus, Polybius, Vergil, Caesar Augustus, Philo and Petronius. (Also listed as History 209) 1 unit-Cramer 

130-Reinvention of the Greeks: Identity, Empire and Diaspora. (First Year Experience. Fulfills the Critical Perspectives: West in Time requirement; two units of Humanities credit)

Greek contributions to American life are many and various. But what does it mean to be Greek? In more than three thousand years of history, Greeks have been masters, slaves, war-mongers and pacifists. They gave us the word "democracy" but also "tyranny." Culturally and geographically, they started as both Asian and European. Homer's Iliad, Euripides' Medea and the New Testament remind us how much of Greek culture has roots in Western Asia. The new library in Alexandria, Egypt, reminds us that Hellenism was most at home in northeast Africa. Through a millennium of Byzantine, and 400 years of Ottoman, rule, through the founding of modern Hellas in the 19th century and the disasters and renewals of the 20th century, the Greek language has been a continuous (if problematic) presence, and at most of these periods Greeks produced wonderful literature, from folk poems to novels.

We will examine questions of ethnicity and identity in ancient epic, philosophy and drama, and in modern poems and stories: the nationalist Dionysios Solomos; the island story-teller Alexandros Papadiamantis; the Alexandrian C.P. Cavafy, whose sense of estrangement involved sexuality as well as history; the Cretan novelist and poet Nikos Kazantzakis; the Nobel Prize-winning poet George Seferis, who lost his childhood home in Asia Minor in 1922. We will read recent women writers, and trace the theme of exile even to Colorado, where a Cretan who took the name Louis Tikas played a heroic role during the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. And we will examine key perceptions of Greece by non-Greeks from Byron on down.

The course is a good introduction to literary and historical studies, classics and cultural studies. Students will receive a single grade for two blocks. No knowledge of Greek is required. 2 units - FitzGibbon, Cramer.

141,142--Introduction to the Sanskrit language. Geared towards students with little or no experience in Sanskrit. Basic reading and pronunciation skills, emphasizing Sanskrit’s unique euphonic system; beginning declensional forms and grammatical structures. Strong focus on in-class oral recitation from memory. Extended Format course, may be taught as two sequential semester courses or a single year-long course. Also listed as Asian Studies (PA) 121,122. ½ unit per semester-L. S. Summer.

222-Topics

2008-09:

Block 4: Topics:  Greek and Roman Sports and Entertainment. The role of sport and entertainment in ancient society.  We begin by examining athletics in the Greek world, specifically the Olympics and other major games.  We will discuss the different types of events and then consider the evolving role athletics played in Greek education and society.  Transition to the Roman world: gladiatorial games, chariot racing, the theatre, and the Olympics in the Roman period.  We trace the development of the status of athletes from amateurs to the professionalization of sport, and pause to consider the place of musicians and actors in Greek and Roman society.  Throughout the course students will become familiar with the architecture of related venues and investigate the role of spectators.  Students will continually be challenged to relate ancient athletics to the sports of today.  Sources will include Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Ovid, Martial and various inscriptions. 1 unit -  Thakur

Block 5: Topics: Freedom and Empire-- The Drama of Ancient Politics. Are all the most serious problems of politics in principle resolvable? Can we even make fundamental progress toward resolving them? Or are we faced with a tragedy of irresolvable conflicts? The comedy of flawed efforts to resolve them? This course explores particular aspects of this general question through the reading of dramatic literature from various times and places, including especially the plays of Shakespeare and Aristophanes. (Also listed as Comparative Literature 220 and Political Science 234.) 1 unit  —  Grace.

2004-05: Greek and Roman Myth into Movies.   The Greeks gave us the myths that have launched a thousand movies.  From the Cocteau classic La Belle et La Bête, to Mark Waters' quirky independent, The House of Yes, the movies have mined ancient myth for material.  Sometimes consciously, and sometimes not, filmmakers rework the abiding questions, putting on them their own imprint which locates them in time and place. The movies have come to reflect our zeitgeist in many of the same ways myth does.  In this class we will read Homer's Odyssey, Cupid and Psyche, and selected other myths to see how characters and themes are developed through time and from artist to artist.  Additional movies may include The Searchers, The Ususal Suspects, The Graduate, Deer Hunter, and Lone Star. CL 222, FS 205, CO 200. 1 unit -- Hughes

    2005-06:Psychoanalysis and Literature: Ancient and Modern Texts In depth exploration of ancient and modern texts to open up meanings of psyche, self and the unconscious.  What is this phenomenon that lies both within and beyond, deep and above, exterior and interior, and which then comes to agency and consciousness in what we claim as “myself as a subject in this world?”  Focus on ancient concepts of psyche as well as modern and post-modern psychological and literary thinkers. Students will write research papers focusing on particular authors.  They can include such writers as Homer, the ancient Greek tragedians, Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Hoffman, Henry James, Kafka and Virginia Woolf, among many others. One Unit - Dobson.

TAUGHT IN CHICAGO(EXTRA EXPENSE)

Olympians and The Olympics: Ancient and Modern Sports Culture. How do the modern Olympic games compare to the original Greek games played over 2500 years ago and how do modern and ancient Olympics compare to sporting events in America which take place on a seasonal basis year round? How does the ancient athlete, as a hero or idol, match up to the modern superstar athlete? This course will investigate primary sources for ancient Greek and Roman sports, the participants, and the culture surrounding these athletic events and compare them to modern American sports. Special emphasis will be placed on the boundaries set by class, race, and gender in both ancient and modern sports cultures. CL 222, HY 209,WS 206. 1 unit - FitzGibbon.

223-The Art of Greece and Rome. Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece. The development of Greek art from Geometric to Hellenistic with emphasis on the classical monuments of Athens. Etruscan art. Survey of Roman art from its origins to the late empire with emphasis on the imperial monuments and topography of Rome. Art of the mystery cults and early Christianity. Prerequisite: Art History 111, 112 or consent of instructor. (Also listed as Art History 207--Block 8) 1 unit - Kolarik

250-Athenian Democracy. Development of democratic institutions from Solon to Pericles, their operations the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, the experiences of citizenship, legal equality, freedom, and love of country.  Slavery, sexual inequality and imperialism as notable, perhaps essential features of the system.  Reading from contemporary historians (Herodotus, Thucydides), theorists (Plato, Aristotle, the 'Old Oligarch'), dramatists (Aeschylus, Aristophanes), political orators (Lysias and Demosthenes) and later commentary from Plutarch to the present.  1 unit - Cramer. (Block 3)

322-Advanced Topics. Study for advanced students in the languages, drama, arts and literature. 1 unit - Department.

2007-08: After Troy: Genre and Trauma. The Trojan War in the Greek and Roman imagination: the war's aftermath in post-Homeric writers with special attention to question of genre. Also listed as Comp. Lit. 300 (Practice in Comparison). 1 unit - Hughes (block 7)