151 - 160 of 166 results for: CLASSICS

Focus is on the interrelation of art, architecture, verbal description, poetry, and music, including the singing of psalms and recitation of the Qur'an. How ekphrasis, the style of writing vividly intended to transform the listeners into spectators, structures the perception of and response to artistic production be it an art object, building, or a musical performance. The role of ekphrasis in animating the inanimate and the importance of breath and spirit, which become manifest in visual, acoustic, olfactory, and gustatory terms. Religious and courtly settings: Hagia Sophia, the Great Palace of Constantinople, the Dome of the Rock, the palaces of Baghdad and Samarra, the mosque at Cordoba, Medinat al-Zahra and the Alhambra. Greek and Arabic writers on ekphrasis in translation, juxtaposing the medieval material to the ancient theories of ekphrasis and modern scholarship.

(Formerly CLASSART 311.) This course will explore concepts of animacy, performance, and presence in the art of Byzantium, focusing on the concept of image understood as the living bodies of the saints, the space of Hagia Sophia and its Eucharist ritual, the polymorphism of the mixed-media icon, and the interaction with these objects in prayer and recitation of epigrams.

The development and practice of law and legal procedure in the ancient Greek world, emphasizing the well documented case of classical Athens. Constitutional, criminal, and civil law, approached through analysis of actual laws and speeches by litigants in Athenian courtrooms. Review of a growing scholarship juxtaposing Greek law to other prominent legal traditions and exploring the role of law in Greek social relations, economics, and literature, and its relationship to Greek conceptions of justice.

This seminar explores the characteristics and development of ancient states from a social-scientific and comparative perspective. Key issues include state formation, state-society relations, citizenship, sovereignty, and diversity in political ecologies from city-states to empires. Basic background knowledge of ancient history is highly desirable. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates majoring in relevant fields.

This seminar explores the characteristics and development of ancient states from a social-scientific and comparative perspective. Key issues include state formation, state-society relations, citizenship, sovereignty, and diversity in political ecologies from city-states to empires. Basic background knowledge of ancient history is highly desirable. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates majoring in relevant fields.

What is an empire? How did they begin? Why have some imperialists been successful, while others failed dismally? Why do some people collaborate with imperialism, while others resist fiercely? This seminar examines the empires of the ancient East Mediterranean between 800 and 300 BC, focusing on two great imperial powers (Assyria, Persia) and three smaller societies on the receiving end of imperial conquest (Israel, Egypt, Greece), and asking why societies that were successful in resisting imperialism often then tried to create empires themselves. The evidence used comes mainly from epigraphy, the Hebrew Bible, and Herodotus. Some background in ancient history and/or comparative politics preferred.

(Formerly CLASSHIS 133/333.) Political philosophy in classical antiquity, focusing on canonical works of Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Historical background. Topics include: political obligation, citizenship, and leadership; origins and development of democracy; and law, civic strife, and constitutional change.

Normative political theory combined with positive political theory to better explain how major texts may have responded to and influenced changes in formal and informal institutions. Emphasis is on historical periods in which catastrophic institutional failure was a recent memory or a realistic possibility. Case studies include Greek city-states in the classical period and the northern Atlantic community of the 17th and 18th centuries including upheavals in England and the American Revolutionary era.

(Formerly CLASSHIS 330A.) Drawing on Herodotus and other literary sources, ancient historians have traditionally seen classical Greece as a very poor land. Recent research, however (much of it conducted here at Stanford), suggests that Greece in fact saw substantial economic growth and rising standards of living across the first millennium BCE. This seminar tests the poor Hellas/wealthy Hellas models against literary and archaeological data. We will develop and test hypotheses to explain the rate and pace of economic change in the Greek world.