Ancient Studies

The stories of the Greek and Roman gods and heroes are at the root of countless works of art, philosophy, literature, and film, from antiquity to the present. Many familiar phrases from the English language also derive from myth: an Achilles heel (and Achilles tendon!), a Trojan horse, Pandora’s box, and so forth. This course will introduce you to the broad range of tales that make up the complex and interconnected network of Greek and Roman mythology.

This course focuses on intercommunal and interstate conflict in the ancient Greek world,
from Homer to the Hellenistic age, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean (730 BCE-100
BCE). The emphasis will be on the two elements of "miltary history": that is, we will pay
equal attention to all the elements of violent, murderous and destructive conflict on the
battlefield and in various forms of unconventional warfare, and to the social, economic and
cultural history of war. In other words, we will look at the experience of combat, tactics,
strategy, operation, sieges, naval warfare; but also at economics, social structure, cultural
constraints, gender constructions. The study of ancient Greek warfare, like everything else in
the realm of ancient history, is very much dependent on good handling of the complex, far
from straightforward, and incomplete sources. We will therefore think about, and practice,
self-aware source criticism, of literary, documentary, visual and material documents.

This course focuses on intercommunal and interstate conflict in the ancient Greek world,
from Homer to the Hellenistic age, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean (730 BCE-100
BCE). The emphasis will be on the two elements of "miltary history": that is, we will pay
equal attention to all the elements of violent, murderous and destructive conflict on the
battlefield and in various forms of unconventional warfare, and to the social, economic and
cultural history of war. In other words, we will look at the experience of combat, tactics,
strategy, operation, sieges, naval warfare; but also at economics, social structure, cultural
constraints, gender constructions. The study of ancient Greek warfare, like everything else in
the realm of ancient history, is very much dependent on good handling of the complex, far
from straightforward, and incomplete sources. We will therefore think about, and practice,
self-aware source criticism, of literary, documentary, visual and material documents.

In this course we will explore the experience of illness and healing in ancient Greece and Rome, with some exploration of other contexts such as Egypt, Babylonia, and Christianity down to modern Greece. The class will focus on close reading of documents, from the viewpoint of the ill and of those who try to understand illness and act on their understanding. We will pay attention to medical texts such as the diagnostic writing of the Hippocratic corpus or the treatises of Galen, but also popular texts and artifacts such as ex-votos.

In this course, we will look critically at the broadly-defined field of Digital Classics—the meeting point of Digital Humanities (DH) and the study of cultures of the ancient Mediterranean—from its origins in the late 1940s through to the present day. In addition to becoming familiar with a range of Digital Classics projects and gaining hands-on experience with some of the core tools that make Digital Classics possible in the present day, we will read theoretical scholarship in both Digital Classics and DH more generally, to think about not just what has been and can be done, but also what should (and should not) be done. We also will think about where (and whether!) to define the boundaries of “Classics” and the boundaries of “digital.” There are no prerequisites: it is NOT NECESSARY for students to have a background in coding or the field of Classics (although knowledge of either or both is welcome!). This course, like the field itself, is multidisciplinary.

This course is designed as an accompaniment to the Greek or Latin
play that is put on by the Barnard and Columbia Ancient Drama Group each year, though
it is open to any student interested in the aesthetics and politics of theater and drama.
Course focus and some content will rotate year to year, calibrated to serve the play or
plays chosen by the student director. We will read these and other relevant other plays or
similarly adjacent texts, as well as scholarly literature on topics centered around the body
in performance, including ancient theaters and stage space, costumes and masks,
deportment and gestures, proxemics, and so on. We will also explore aspects of ancient
drama and theatricality that relate to translation and reception, as well as inflections of
gender and status. Other topics may include the mythic background (e.g., in epic and/or
lyric), politics of aesthetics in ancient Athens, and gender-genre dynamics.
Each component will extend over three or four classes and consider the ancient
plays through readings of primary texts (in translation) and conceptual / contextual
backgrounds. There will be an additional class hour for those who wish to read the play
in the original language (signed up for as a 1-point directed reading).

This class will consider the idea and history of “the book” through history and around the world.  Its primary objective is to introduce students to major topics and questions in “book history” while working to 1) resist the discipline’s traditional interest in modern European print culture and 2) situate that interest in global and transhistorical contexts.

Learning about the histories of books and writing in different eras and parts of the world will go hand-in-hand with critical examinations of how and why those histories have been periodized and narrativized the way they have.  Although “book” is a technological category, we will consider how helpful technological narratives and comparisons of book practice and culture are.  We will also engage not only in transhistorical and transnational comparisons of book culture and practice, but also examine the global book as a postcolonial phenomenon, marked by patterns of influence, appropriation and imposition across time and space.

This course will perforce be not comprehensive but instead oriented around case studies: we will be unable to examine every stage of every nation’s book history in detail.  Rather, we will focus on objects and scholarly case studies that illuminate both the history and methods involved, and on productive points of contact.  We will visit libraries and examine books both in person and through virtual simulacra.

What does it mean to tell “global” histories of the book?  For our purposes, it means not assuming that the terms, categories, or periods of modern western book history should be definitive for other times and places.  It also means examining the way that book cultures participated in and were shaped by patterns of exchange, conquest and colonization.  We will explore points of contact across time as well as space.

By the end of the semester, students will be able to speak to the history of the book across several cultures and linguistic traditions, speak comparatively to dimensions of book practice in two cultures, and be able to present the history and comparative dimensions of a chosen object from Columbia’s special collections. Students will also become acquainted with the use of special collections libraries.

A seminar designed to prepare students to develop and bring to completion a substantive piece of original research in an area of their own interest and choosing which may (or may not) be developed into a Senior Thesis the following semester; (ii) a lecture series introducing students to the faculty of the Department of Classics at Columbia University and the methods of scholarly research in the disciplines that comprise classical studies. 

Focusing on a canonical author is an immensely productive way to explore translation research and practice. The works of Sappho, Dante, Rilke, Césaire or Cavafy raise the question of reception in relation to many different critical approaches and illustrate many different strategies of translation and adaptation. The very issue of intertextuality that challenged the validity of author-centered courses after Roland Barthes’s proclamation of the death of the author reinstates it if we are willing to engage the oeuvre as an on-going interpretive project. By examining the poetry of the Greek Diaspora poet C. P. Cavafy in all its permutations (as criticism, translation, adaptation), the Cavafy case becomes an experimental ground for thinking about how a canonical author can open up our theories and practices of translation. For the final project students will choose a work by an author with a considerable body of critical work and translations and, following the example of Cavafy and his translators, come up with their own retranslations. Among the materials considered are commentary by E. M. Forster, C. M. Bowra, and Roman Jakobson, translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, James Merrill, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Daniel Mendelsohn, poems by W.H. Auden, Lawrence Durrell, and Joseph Brodsky, and visual art by David Hockney, and Duane Michals.

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Topics chosen in consultation between members of the staff and students.

For students who have never studied Greek. An intensive study of grammar with reading and writing of simple Attic prose.

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.

Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit. 

This seminar aims to provide students in the post-baccalaureate certificate program with opportunities 1) to (re-)familiarize themselves with a selection of major texts from classical antiquity, which will be read in English, 2) to become acquainted with scholarship on these texts and with scholarly writing in general, 3) to write analytically about these texts and the interpretations posed about them in contemporary scholarship, and 4) to read in the original language selected passages of one of the texts in small tutorial groups, which will meet every week for an additional hour with members of the faculty.

Prerequisites: junior standing. Required for all majors in classics and classical studies. The topic changes from year to year, but is always broad enough to accommodate students in the languages as well as those in the interdisciplinary major. Past topics include: love, dining, slavery, space, power.

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.

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.

Prerequisites: at least two terms of Greek at the 3000-level or higher. Readings in Greek literature from Homer to the 4th century B.C.

A reading of Homer’s Odyssey with a focus on seminal episodes having to do with the
construction of the plot, and the intricate relationship between the Homeric narrator, his
characters, and internal and external audiences.

The Odyssey famously contains comparisons of its polytropos character (var.
reading polykrotos) to a poet, both explicitly (11.363ff.) and implicitly (19.203 with Hesiod,
Theogony 26-9). We will consider how the quality of being polytropos (including a tendency
towards ambiguity and indirection) factors into the ethics of narration in the poem, at every level
of the narrative. We will also consider the ethics of narration in the poem in relation to its
importance in the subsequent Greek rhetorical tradition. Archaic poetry, and the Homeric
poems, often suffer from the implicit bias associated with being the earliest extant Greek
literature, leading to the view that their content is naïve when compared against the literary
developments of the fifth century and the Hellenistic period. This seminar will approach
the Odyssey as a foundational text for Greek rhetorical culture, with particular attention to what it
offered the rhetorical culture of classical Athens.

This is the first semester of a year-long course designed for students wishing to learn Greek as it is written and spoken in Greece today. As well as learning the skills necessary to read texts of moderate difficulty and converse on a wide range of topics, students explore Modern Greeces cultural landscape from parea to poetry to politics. Special attention will be paid to Greek New York. How do our, American, Greek-American definitions of language and culture differ from their, Greek ones?

Prerequisites: GRKM un2102 This course builds on the elements of the language acquired in GRKM1101 through 2102, but new students may place into it, after special arrangement with the instructor. It introduces the students to a number of authentic multimodal materials drawn from a range of sources which include films, literary texts, media, music etc. in order to better understand Greece’s current cultural, socio-economic, and political landscape. In doing so, it aims to foster transcultural understanding and intercultural competence, while further developing the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Topics of discussion include language, gender equality, youth unemployment, education, queer identities, refugees, and the multilayered aspects of the crisis.Pre-requisite for this class: GRKM 2102 or placement test. Instructor’s permission required if the students have not taken GRKM2102 or equivalent.

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

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.

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

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 UN2102 or the equivalent. Selections from Vergil and Horace. Combines literary analysis with work in grammar and metrics.

This seminar aims to provide students in the post-baccalaureate certificate program with opportunities 1) to (re-)familiarize themselves with a selection of major texts from classical antiquity, which will be read in English, 2) to become acquainted with scholarship on these texts and with scholarly writing in general, 3) to write analytically about these texts and the interpretations posed about them in contemporary scholarship, and 4) to read in the original language selected passages of one of the texts in small tutorial groups, which will meet every week for an additional hour with members of the faculty.

Prerequisites: junior standing. Required for all majors in Classics and Classical Studies. The topic changes from year to year but is always broad enough to accommodate students in the languages as well as those in the interdisciplinary major. Past topics include: love, dining, slavery, space, power.

Prerequisites: LATN V3012 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.

Prerequisites: at least two terms of Latin at the 3000-level or higher. Latin literature from the beginning to early Augustan times.

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

This seminar aims to introduce students to the range and complexity of the tragedies composed by the eminent philosopher-politician, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 2 BCE-65 CE). The course will combine intensive linguistic analysis of individual dramas with a focus on their political, philosophical and cultural meanings in the 1st century CE. Beyond our shared study of these highly allusive texts, a main goal will be to demonstrate that Seneca does not just write within a received tradition, but also uses remarkable artistic strategies by which to give new life to that tradition.