Graduate

Required two-year sequence focusing on the origins, development, and interaction of Greek and Latin literature, history, and philosophy. Greek and Latin material taught in alternate years.

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New trends in Roman numismatics (from the late Republic to the early Empire, 3rd c. BCE-1st c. CE). Archaeology from coins. Barter, money and coinage. The introduction of coinage in Rome and the provinces. Making money (coin production), using money (monetary, non-monetary and ritual uses), losing money (coin circulation, hoards, single finds): contextual interpretations. Monetary systems: coins from Rome and coins from the provinces. Coinage and identity. False coinage.

Restricted to graduate students. We focus on the question of how to study the Roman monarchy today: as Roman history or as part of the global history of monarchy? Focus is on methodology, emphasizing comparative and transdisciplinary approaches.

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.

This is the first of two seminars on this topic.

Competing 20th-century approaches. Emphasis is on new research and how to compose research papers. Topics include: narratology, reception, gender, poetics, time and space, mythology, material culture, hellenization, romanization, orientalism, allusion and intertextuality, and emotions.

An intensive study of the entire poem, with particular attention given to problems of narrative construction, characterization, diction, and themes. Basic knowledge of Homeric language and versemaking is a prerequisite. Reading will cover about 500 lines of Greek each week in addition to secondary readings (several book chapters or articles).

Representation of women in ancient Chinese and Greek texts.  How men viewed women and what women had to say about themselves and their societies. Primary readings in poetry, drama, and didactic writings. Relevance for understanding modern concerns; use of comparison for discovering historical and cultural patterns.

Required two-year sequence focusing on the origins, development, and interaction of Greek and Latin literature, history, and philosophy. Texts of Augustan literature required by the graduate syllabus, emphasizing poetry and major authors.