Ancient Studies

Concepts of ethnicity and race – deeply complex and often fraught – are catalyzing forces in modern society. This seminar explores the changing definitions and resonances of these categories in ancient contexts. Course readings will cover a variety of societies but return repeatedly to Egypt and Nubia as a touchstone. Over the course of the semester, we will explore how Nubians and Egyptians viewed one another as well as how both Egyptians and Nubians experienced and were experienced by immigrants, colonizers, and travelers. Throughout the ancient Mediterranean, as we’ll see, self-definitions and cultural boundaries shifted radically according to changing power dynamics both within groups and between them.

In seminar discussions, we’ll pose the following questions: How and when did groups who saw themselves as distinct from one another cooperate and intermarry? Define themselves in opposition to other groups or actively blur boundaries? Mobilize concepts of ethnicity or race to justify oppression? Engage in competition or resistance? Where, we will ask, did societies fracture and/or integrate? And what role did bicultural individuals play in cultural conversations and mediations? We will also seek to understand how our conceptions of ethnicity and race in the past are influenced not only by the biases of the present but by the methodologies we employ. In our discussions and investigations this semester we will learn a great deal about Northeast Africa in antiquity – but, so too, about ethnicity, concepts of race, and power throughout the ancient Mediterranean.

The reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (27bce-14ce), has been seen as a Roman revolution, both political and cultural. Rome had for centuries been governed as a Republic, but a series of increasingly divisive civil wars allowed Augustus to create a new political system in which he exercised sole rule as the ‘first citizen’ within a ‘Restored Republic’. Augustus’ reign lasted more than 40 years, and established a model of autocratic rule that would last for four centuries. During this time there were profound changes in the political, social, and cultural structures of Rome. In this course, you will examine the nature of these changes, Augustus’ political strategies, military activities, and religious initiatives through his own writing, the accounts of (often hostile) historians and a range of literary and archaeological sources, including Roman poetry. Ultimately, we will address the question: how did Augustus achieve the seemingly paradoxical feat of becoming a monarch within a republican system?

In this seminar we will explore the ancient novel, this fascinating product of the Graeco-Roman world. We have a two-fold goal : on the one hand we have the  literary objective to explore how narrative works and how genre is constructed. On the other hand, we will explore how the construction of genre relates to history. We will look closely at four novels : first Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, and the Aethiopian story by Heliodorus, both originally written in Greek; then the Satyricon by Petronius and the Metamorphosis by Apuleius originally written in Latin. At the same time we will look for parallels and contrasts in other texts and also material culture. Romance, love, desire,, past and present, nature and society, city and countryside, the construction of gender through the narrative, the imaginary and real landscapes of the Roman world, reality and fantasy Roman Greece, social class and religious choices, human and divine as historical products, individual and community, literature and history are only  some of the themes we will explore. An emphasis will be given to the ancient novel as a source for contemporary religious life and as a representation of religion. A pivotal question will also be the reception of the novel in modern and contemporary music, literature and film. 

Proseminar is designed to offer beginning MA and PhD students an overview of (i) the major sub-disciplinary areas that are gathered under the umbrella term ‘classics’, making it a fundamentally interdisciplinary field of enquiry, and (ii) the diverse methodologies that are standardly applied in many subfields of classical research and publication.

Proseminar is designed to offer beginning MA and PhD students an overview of (i) the major sub-disciplinary areas that are gathered under the umbrella term ‘classics’, making it a fundamentally interdisciplinary field of enquiry, and (ii) the diverse methodologies that are standardly applied in many subfields of classical research and publication.

Proseminar is designed to offer beginning MA and PhD students an overview of (i) the major sub-disciplinary areas that are gathered under the umbrella term ‘classics’, making it a fundamentally interdisciplinary field of enquiry, and (ii) the diverse methodologies that are standardly applied in many subfields of classical research and publication.

In this course, we will explore the material and visual culture of the Mediterranean lands and beyond, that is Greece, Italy, Spain, North Africa, Asia Minor, Ancient Near East etc. Of course, facing the immensity of the topic and the bibliography we will be necessarily selective and experimental. We will alternate between reading ancient classical sources, secondary treatments, theoretical and conceptual readings, excavation reports, archaeological guides, and actual artifacts and images. The goal is to familiarize Classics students with trends in the study of material culture and to apply interdisciplinarity in research. We will aim to hold every other session in a museum in the New York region (Metropolitan Museum, Brooklyn museum, etc). The selection of artifacts below is chose to complement and complicate the readings, but other choices are perfectly possible according to student interests and the evolution of our discussions.

Used as punishment since antiquity for the political and social dissidents, exile, penal colonies, concentration camps, and prisons have been produced as conceptual and concrete spaces where constructions of the body politic have been contested. How does the experience of the spatialized body produce social and political subjectivities, especially with the employment of discourses of inclusion and exclusion, of grafting and excising onto and from the body politic? In this seminar we will explore these questions especially as they pertain to the instrumentalities that seek to erect rhetorics and narratives of utopias within the enclosures of specific dystopic spaces: prisons, refugee and concentration camps, schools and other morphing institutions of re-formation.

This seminar explores the relationship between literature, culture, and mental health. It pays particular emphasis to the poetics of emotions structuring them around the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and the concept of hope. During the course of the semester, we will discuss a variety of content that explores issues of race, socioeconomic status, political beliefs, abilities/disabilities, gender expressions, sexualities, and stages of life as they are connected to mental illness and healing. Emotions are anchored in the physical body through the way in which our bodily sensors help us understand the reality that we live in. By feeling backwards and thinking forwards, we will ask a number of important questions relating to literature and mental health, and will trace how human experiences are first made into language, then into science, and finally into action.

The course surveys texts from Homer, Ovid, Aeschylus and Sophocles to Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, C.P. Cavafy, Dinos Christianopoulos, Margarita Karapanou, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Katerina Gogou etc., and the work of artists such as Toshio Matsumoto, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Anohni.

Homer’s Odyssey, likely composed around the 9 th or 8 th century BCE, has had an enduring legacy. Our journey this semester will bring us into contact with a varied selection of artistic endeavors, spanning different cultures, times, and media, that draw on the Odyssey for material or inspiration. A guiding set of broadly-formulated questions will steer our course: Can we find in the Odyssey some of the same meaning, today, that it held for its original audience and that it held, subsequently, for later Greeks? Do receptions of the Odyssey try to recapture it, reframe it, refashion it, or become something independent?  (Are these mutually exclusive options?) How
do we read these works in light of the Odyssey, and also how do we re-visit and re-read the Odyssey in light of its receptions? It is no secret that the present bears the enduring weight of the past, but is the past changed as a result? There is no requirement to have read the Odyssey previously: students who have read it or have not read it will approach the course in different, but equally fruitful, ways.

Prerequisites: GREK UN1101- GREK UN1102 or the equivalent. Selections from Attic prose.

Prerequisites: GREK UN1101- GREK UN1102 or GREK UN1121 or the equivalent. Detailed grammatical and literary study of several books of the Iliad and introduction to the techniques or oral poetry, to the Homeric hexameter, and to the historical background of Homer.

Prerequisites: GREK UN2101 - GREK UN2102 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.

Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of reading in Greek literature, to be tested by a series of short papers, one long paper, or an oral or written examination.

Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of reading in Greek literature, to be tested by a series of short papers, one long paper, or an oral or written examination.

Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of reading in Greek literature, to be tested by a series of short papers, one long paper, or an oral or written examination.

This course provides a survey of Greek literature.  It aims to improve students’ reading skills, familiarize them with some of the most canonical works of Greek literature, afford them a sense of Greek literary history, and introduce them to modern methodological approaches.  Readings are drawn from the Classics Ph.D. reading list.

This course examines the three dramatic genres of fifth-century BCE Athens – tragedy, comedy, and satyr play – alongside one another. Even though these genres were often performed on the same stage and sometimes at the same festival, modern scholars have tended to treat them separately. Each week we will instead allow these distinct forms of drama to intersect by close reading substantial selections from a tragedy, a comedy, and a satyr play under a particular theme or topic. This will allow us to explore the insights and resonances that emerge at the intersection between these genres, as we consider commonalities and differences between dramatic genres, as well as how Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Cratinus, Eupolis, Euripides, Sophocles and others handled dramatic structures, myth, politics, religion, and staging. Our aim is to gain insight into the intricacies of ancient Greek theater and the boundaries that modern scholars have drawn between these sibling genres. Because most satyr play – as well as the comedies of Cratinus and Eupolis – survives in fragments we will additionally explore the challenges and opportunities of working with fragmentary drama. While our focus will be on the primary texts, the assigned secondary reading will also introduce students to a range of key areas of focus such as the city, the chorus, and gods as well as to various recent approaches related to theories of embodiment, materiality, and cognition. This broad-ranging approach is designed not only to familiarize students with the theoretical landscape of Greek drama of the last twenty-five years but also to encourage advanced exploration of ancient Greek theater through a range of critical approaches and methodologies.

Prerequisites: GRKM UN1101 or the equivalent. Continuation of GRKM UN1101. Introduction to modern Greek language and culture. Emphasis on speaking, writing, basic grammar, syntax, and cross-cultural analysis.

Prerequisites: GRKM UN2101 or the equivalent. Continuation of GRKM UN2101. Students complete their knowledge of the fundamentals of Greek grammar and syntax while continuing to enrich their vocabulary.

For students who have never studied Latin. An intensive study of grammar with reading of simple prose and poetry.

Prerequisites: LATN UN1101. A continuation of LATN UN1101, including a review of grammar and syntax for students whose study of Latin has been interrupted.

Prerequisites: LATN UN1101. A continuation of LATN UN1101, including a review of grammar and syntax for students whose study of Latin has been interrupted.

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Prerequisites: LATN UN1101 & UN1102 or LATN UN1121 or equivalent. Selections from Catullus and Cicero.

Prerequisites: LATN UN2101 or the equivalent. Selections from Ovids Metamorphoses and from Sallust, Livy, Seneca, or Pliny.

Prerequisites: LATN UN2101 or the equivalent. Selections from Ovids Metamorphoses and from Sallust, Livy, Seneca, or Pliny.

Prerequisites: LATN UN2102 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.

Prerequisites: LATN UN3012 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.

This course provides a survey of Latin literature.  It aims to improve students’ reading skills, familiarize them with some of the most canonical works of Latin literature, afford them a sense of Latin literary history, and introduce them to modern methodological approaches.  Readings are drawn from the Classics Ph.D. reading list.

Prerequisites: at least four semesters of Latin, or the equivalent. Intensive review of Latin syntax with translation of English sentences and paragraphs into Latin.

A close analysis of Cicero’s Brutus in its many contexts: as a response to Caesar’s dictatorship; as an account of oratory and rhetorical practices in Rome; and as the earliest surviving account of Roman literary history.