printer friendly pageCLASSGEN 24N: Sappho: Erotic Poetess of Lesbos
Preference to freshmen. Sappho's surviving fragments in English; traditions referring to or fantasizing about her disputed life. How her poetry and legend inspired women authors and male poets such as Swinburne, Baudelaire, and Pound. Paintings inspired by Sappho in ancient and modern times, and composers who put her poetry to music.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-CE, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Peponi, A. (PI)
CLASSGEN 30N: The Spell of Orpheus
Singer, shaman, lover, and murder victim, Orpheus has fascinated creative artists and thinkers for more than two millennia. His magical power of song inspired composers from Monteverdi to Philip Glass, while the tale of this attempt to bring his wife back from the dead provided hope for ancient cult members and material for modern cinema. We will explore the Orpheus myth in detail, starting with the ancient sources, then follow his story throughout Western art, literature, music, dance, philosophy and film.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Martin, R. (PI)
CLASSGEN 35: Becoming Like God: An Introduction to Greek Ethical Philosophy
Why do Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle identify achieving wisdom as becoming like gods? How does godlike wisdom affect one's ethical choices? Sources includes Greek tragedies representing traditional Greek values. The Greek philosophers' rejection of this tradition and their radically new ethical theories arguing that people should imitate the gods, who are ethically perfect. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle offered different ethical theories, but they shared basic conceptions of goodness and happiness. Are their ethical philosophies operative in the modern day?
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-EthicReas, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-ER
Instructors:
Nightingale, A. (PI)
CLASSGEN 81: Philosophy and Literature (COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENGEN 181, GERGEN 181, HUMNTIES 181, ITALGEN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVGEN 181)
Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Anderson, R. (PI)
;
Landy, J. (PI)
CLASSGEN 123: Urban Sustainability: Long-Term Archaeological Perspectives (CLASSGEN 223, URBANST 115)
Comparative and archaeological view of urban design and sustainability. How fast changing cities challenge human relationships with nature. Innovation and change, growth, industrial development, the consumption of goods and materials. Five millennia of city life including Near Eastern city states, Graeco-Roman antiquity, the Indus Valley, and the Americas.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Shanks, M. (PI)
CLASSGEN 124: Sappho, Plato, Proust: The Aesthetics of Desire (CLASSGEN 224)
Seminar. Beauty and desire as represented in the poetry of Sappho, in Plato's philosophy, and in the modernist novel of Marcel Proust,
In Search of Lost Time. Differences in the social and historical context within which these works were generated. Focus is on the similar ways erotic desire is approached and aestheticized in these three major and influential authors. All texts in translation.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Peponi, A. (PI)
CLASSGEN 129: Classical Epic and the English Renaissance (CLASSGEN 229)
The reception of Greek and Latin epics in 16th- and 17th-century England. How were the ancient epics read and interpreted? What kinds of commentary were being used and written? The creative appropriation of the ancient epics in new poems: Spenser and Milton set against the background of less well-known epics of the period, with focus on civil war epics.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Hardie, P. (PI)
CLASSGEN 133: Invention of Science
Does science have to be the way is it? Does it have to be at all? The creation of science in the ancient Greek world; its invention of concepts such as nature, rationality, and proof; and its invention of fields from biology to geometry. Comparison with the Chinese invention of a different kind of science. The extent to which contemporary science is still Greek science.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
Netz, R. (PI)
CLASSGEN 147: Culture Wars in Epic Poetry (COMPLIT 147)
Homer's
Iliad and
Odyssey, Virgil's
Aeneid, Melville's
Moby Dick, and Walcott's
Omeros are epics that feature the clash of civilizations. Topics include cultural values and social relations including race, class, ethnicity, and gender in Homeric Greece, the early Roman Empire, 19th-century America, and modern-day St. Lucia a Caribbean island colonized by European empires and populated with African slave. The literary aspects of epic and how each epic imitates and transforms earlier epics.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
Nightingale, A. (PI)
CLASSGEN 154: Social Power: The Law and the State, a Comparative Study of Ancient Legal Systems (CLASSGEN 354)
For ancient history majors and those interested in the history of law. Ancient Mediterranean legal systems, from ancient Egypt and the Near East to Greece and Rome. Focus is on ancient documents including the
Code of Hammurabi, Egyptian sale contracts, as well as analysis of ancient law such as Maine's
Ancient Law, and Weber. The development of the law; solutions in ancient societies to the common problems of crime, contract, inheritance, marriage, and the family; and the enforcement of property rights.
Last offered: Winter 2004
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci
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