71 - 80 of 211 results for: CLASSICS

Why were cultural practices and institutions key in political debates in Athens? We will explore democratic and authoritarian cultural models. A thorough discussion of some of the less-read Platonic works, including his last work, the Laws, in light of other 4th century BCE thinkers on cultural matters. Of interest to students of Philosophy, Theater and Performance Studies, Political Science, as well as Classics.

This will be an advanced class on Homer where we learn to recite his verses in their proper meter and with pitch accents. Reading out loud in class will be required, but memorization not required. Class will also cover the linguistics of Homer's archaic language, etymological histories of the words he uses, his poetic formulas and his other poetic devices. Central to this class will be recordings made by Ioannnis Stratakis which are available for purchase at AncientGreek.eu. This class in Singing Homer will be a rare attempt to recover and make alive the sounds of Homer's great epic poems.

We will examine several key aspects of Greek religion: the Greek conception of the gods; how humans got messages from the gods through oracles, divination, and epiphanies; and the festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries. We will read fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides, and Plato¿ Apology, Republic 6-7, and Phaedrus to investigate these philosophers¿ new conceptions of gods and humans. What kinds of divinities did the philosophers conceive of? How could a human achieve divine wisdom? To what extent did the philosophers use traditional religious ideas? nnAdvanced undergrads may register

Gods and heroes, fate and free choice, gender conflict, the justice or injustice of the universe: these are just some of the fundamental human issues that we will explore in about ten of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Explores the relationship between chant and images in medieval art. Examples are sourced from both Byzantium and the Latin West including the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Ste. Foy at Conques, and Santiago de Compostela. We will explore how music sharpens the perception of the spatial, visual programs and liturgical objects.

How and why did Greek and Roman authors write about history, and why does it matter? Readings range across 1,000 years, with particular attention to ancient views and debates about the purpose and practice of historiography. For undergraduates at all levels. Texts read in translation. Basic knowledge of Greek and Roman history desirable.

Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.

The course examines core human rights concepts and issues as they arise in a variety of contexts ranging from the ancient world to today. These issues include slavery, human trafficking, gender based violence, discrimination against marginalized groups, and how these and other issues are linked to war, internal conflict, and imperialism. We will consider the ways in which such issues emerge, are explicitly treated, or are ignored in a variety of historical and contemporary settings with a particular emphasis on the impact that war and conflict have on laws and norms that in principle aim to protect individuals from violence and exploitation. This inquiry also entails consideration of the modern notion of the universality of human rights based on a conception of a common humanity and how alien that concept is in states and communities that define or embody hierarchies that systematically exclude groups or populations from the protections and respect that other groups and individuals are afforded. Nowhere do the devastating consequences of such exclusions become clearer than in times of crisis and conflict. The course draws upon a variety of case studies from the Greco-Roman world and other temporal and geographical contexts to explore the political and social dynamics that shape and inform the violence inherent in such events.

Slavery and trafficking in persons in the Greco-Roman world were legal and ubiquitous; today slavery is illegal in most states and regarded as a grave violation of human rights and as a crime against humanity under international law. In recent trends, human trafficking has been re-conceptualized as a form of "modern day slavery. " Despite more than a century since the success of the abolition movement, slavery and trafficking continue in the 21st century on a global scale. The only book for the course is: Peter Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, Cambridge University Press