161 - 167 of 167 results for: CLASSICS

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. This course is open to PhD students only. Non-PhD students should enroll in POLISCI 230A/330A (also listed as CLASSICS 181/381, PHIL 176A/276A) Classical Seminar: Origins of Political Thought.

This seminar explores the history and archaeology of socio-economic inequality in the ancient world (broadly defined) from a comparative and transdisciplinary perspective.

The course explores the role of practical reasoning (instrumental rationality) in the ethical-political works of e.g. Plato and Aristotle, in the historical-political projects of e.g. Herodotus and Thucydides, and in the design of classical Greek institutions. We ask to what degree ancient Greeks shared intuitions concerning the rationality of choice with contemporary decision and game theorists. The Greek tradition recognized the limits of expected utility maximization in predicting or explaining the actual behavior of individuals, groups, and states, and sought to explain divergences from predicted rational behavior. Greek social theorists may, therefore, also have shared some of the intuitions of contemporary behavioral economists. Topics will include individual rationality, rationality of groups and states, the origins of social order, emergence and persistence of monarchical and democratic regimes, conflict and cooperation in interstate relations, competition and cooperation in exchange. Examining the Greek tradition of thought on practical reasoning has some implications for we might think about deliberation and bargaining in contemporary democratic-political, interpersonal-ethical, and interstate contexts. PREREQUISITES: Students in the course are expected to have a background in EITHER classical studies (literature, history, or philosophy), OR Greek political thought (Origins of Political Thought or equivalent) OR in formal/positive political theory. Registration for undergraduates is with permission of instructor (email jober@stanford.edu).

Study of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour of Italy through visualization tools of the digital age. Critical readings in both visual epistemology and current Grand Tour studies; interrogating the relationship between quantitative and qualitative approaches in digital humanities; what new insights in eighteenth-century British travel to Italy does data visualization offer us? Students will transform traditional texts and documents into digital datasets, developing individual data analysis projects using text mining, data capture and visualization techniques.

This course is elected once a student is ready to begin research for the dissertation, usually shortly after admission to candidacy. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the research.

(Formerly CLASSGEN 801.)