| source Northwestern (X) |
level |
department CLASSICS Classics-Readings in English (X) |
In this course we will study the life and times of Cleopatra VII, women and society in the cosmopolitan culture of Hellenistic Egypt, and the reception of Cleopatra by cosmopolitan artists in the world of painting, film, and music in the 19th through 21st centuries. The first third of the course will focus on the ancient literary representations of Cleopatra VII and the social history of women and Ptolemaic queens in Egypt. Topics include: representations of Cleopatra in ancient Latin literature (Plutarch, Pliny, Virgil, Horace, Lucan); women in the culture and society of Hellenistic Egypt; the iconography of Cleopatra in ancient material culture; Cleopatra VII: historical realities vs. ÂOrientalist fantasies; the reception of Cleopatra in 19th century painters Rixens, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Jean-Leon Gerome, the reception of Cleopatra in opera, contemporary music, and modern film.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
Description yet to be determined. Class will meet with PHIL 410 Special Topics in Philosophy.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
In this course we will study women in Antiquity in ancient Greece, Rome, and Ptolemaic Egypt in literature and society from the eighth century B.C.E. through the second century C.E. Although the emphasis of this course is upon portrayals of Greek and Roman women in myth, literature, and history in the primary literary works (e.g. Homer, Euripides, Herodotus, Virgil, Livy and Suetonius), it also incorporates an interdisciplinary approach in order to better understand representations of women in Antiquity: in addition to literary evidence, we occasionally make use of archaeological, epigraphic, and legal evidence from the ancient world so that we might situate the literary sources in social and cultural contexts and to comprehend the reality of the daily lives of real women in the ancient worldÂthe wealthy and aristocratic as well as slaves, prostitutes, and poor women. In addition to enjoying the literary portrayals of ancient women, we will consider the following questions: How does what we know of the daily lives of women compare and contrast with representations in our literary sources? Do we see stereotypes of women in ancient literature? Are male (with few exceptions) authors re-inscribing social norms and expected modes of behavior?
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
Rome, a small city-state on the Italian peninsula, grew to rule an empire that stretched from Mesopotamia to Scotland and gave the western world a common culture. Her political upheavals set the agenda for subsequent centuries and her military and imperial prowess have always fired the imagination; Latin became the literary language of Virgil and Cicero and later the mark of an educated person; under her rule, philosophy, science and the arts flourished and Christianity began, matured and was spread. Yet we must also remember that the Romans gloried in conquest and that with them slaughter was spectator sport and slavery went unquestioned. Their achievements have informed our world in the most fundamental way and nowhere more than this Republic, whose founders looked to Rome for a model. Lectures and sections will each cover a key event in Roman history or some broader topic in the cultures of Rome and the empire.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
The range of contemporary retellings of the myth of Medea attests to the powerful resonances that a modern audience may attach to a story of exile, abandon, and infanticide. Yet a full appreciation of the significance of these plays, films, or novels as discourses on contemporary culture requires a careful examination of their relation to Euripides paradigmatic treatment of the myth in his 431 BCE tragedy. This course offers a reading of Euripides Medea that ties the play to the political, social, and cultural background of fifth century Athens and compares it to both earlier and later versions of the myth ranging from PindarÂs Fourth Pythian Ode to PasoliniÂs 1970 film and Christa WolfÂs 1996 novel. Special attention will be given to Euripides use of language and metaphors, to the performative context of Greek tragedy, and to the representation of women and foreigners in the play.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
Topic: The heritage of Alexander the Great. The aim of these seminars, meeting once per week for nine weeks, are to discuss the enormous impact of the conquests of Alexander the Great and the consequent spread of Greek culture into territories not previously deeply explored. Beginning with an analysis of Alexander as a classical and contemporary icon, the course will provide a general overview of the period covered by the seminar, paying particular attention to various points for discussion, in particular to the interplay between western and eastern ideas in what we usually define as "Hellenistic" culture. The analysis will be conducted through combining literary and epigraphic evidence with visual sources and for this purpose students will be introduced to the methodology of Classics subfields, as well as basic bibliographic and digital tools.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
Although tragedy and comedy had played a central role in classical Greek society and grew increasingly popular in the Hellenistic period, in Rome, the place of theatre in society and, indeed, the very nature of theatre changed. What happened and why? In what ways did Roman plays imitate and adapt Greek comedies and tragedies? How did their staging differ? Where were they performed and by whom? In this course, we will concentrate on key moments and specific plays in order to trace the development of theatrical performance in the Roman Republic, Empire and early Christian period. In 2009, this class will meet frequently with invited scholars of Roman and early Christian theatre, including C.W. Marshall, Kathleen Coleman, Diana Ng, Blake Leyerle, and, looking forward to the early modern period, Will West.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
"This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other." So begins the first Western work of historiography, Herodotus' account of the unsuccessful attempts of the Persians to conquer Greece. Geographer, ethnographer, historian, and story-teller par excellence, Herodotus takes his time before getting to his main story, the events culminating in the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. He tells you about the origin of the Persian empire in the borderlands of modern Iraq and Iran, its spread into Turkey, Egypt, and the Russian steppe, but wherever he goes, he displays his insatiable curiosity about the variety and sameness of people in different places. No other ancient text gives you a similarly comprehensive and generous account of the Mediterranean world and its Eastern hinterlands. We will talk our way through this book with the help of Robert Strassler's Landmark Herodotus. The many maps and notes of this edition make it much easier to find your way around the people and places of the narrative.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
An introduction to the history of Greece in the fifth and early fourth centuries B.C.; emphasis on literary texts, and Athenian social, political and intellectual history.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
In this course, we examine Greek myth and Roman history on film. We begin by asking how celebrated film directors, including Camus, Pasolini, and Dassin, have used and adapted Greek myths. In the second half of the course, we take up blockbuster films that dramatize moments in Roman history. We analyze in close detail Kubrick's SPARTACUS (1960) and, a major hit of the early teens, the Italian movie LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, and its Hollywood remake of 1935.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
From Mighty Aphrodite to Troy through Narcissus and Oedipus, the vocabulary of psychology as well as recent Hollywood releases attest to the enduring power of Greek myths to speak to our imagination and to shape our approach to the world and to ourselves. Through close reading and analysis of Greek and Roman epic, tragedy, sculpture, and vase painting, the course explores how the Greeks and the Romans used myth to define or question their values, culture, and identity.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
Introduction to the pre-industrial, Mediterranean economies of ancient Greece and Rome. Farming, transportation, settlement patterns, capitalism and trade, slavery, and coinage.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
How do institutions such as museums, and other created contexts such as websites and archaeological sites developed as tourist destinations, shape and construct our notions of the past? How are these institutions enmeshed with broader cultural and political agendas regarding cultural identity and otherness, the formation of artistic canons, and even the concept of ancient art? This course explores modern strategies of collecting, classification, and display of material culture from ancient Egypt, the Middle East, Greece, and Rome, both in Europe and the United States and in their present-day homelands. Topics examined include the development of modern displays devoted to ancient civilizations in public and private museums, notions of authenticity and identity, issues of cultural heritage and patrimony, temporary and blockbuster shows, virtual exhibitions, and the archaeological site as locus of display.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
This course takes up the history of ancient Sicily from the 8th century BCE colonization to the Hellenistic tyrannies of the 4th century BCE. We pay particular attention to the colonization movement, relations with pre-Greek cultures on the island, conflicts with Carthaginians and Athenians, democratic experiments and the periods of artistic and cultural growth under the tyrants. Students will examine literary and archaeological sources closely; they will discuss and analyze key episodes in the history of the Greek West; and they will develop a general understanding of Greek expansion to the Western Mediterranean, ancient colonization and the cultures that arose in this ancient new world.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page
From James Joyce through Derek Walcott to the Coen Brothers, the Odyssey has provided a major source of inspiration for contemporary artists. What makes the Odyssey relevant to 20th and 21st century concerns? How is the epic appropriated, engaged, and subverted by contemporary voices ranging from modernist, through post-colonial, to feminist writers and film-makers? To what extent do the Odyssey and its contemporary appropriations stand in a relation of reciprocal provocation and illumination? The seminar will address such questions by focusing on major instances of 20th century engagement with the Odyssey, including Joyce's Ulysses, Pound's Cantos, Derek Walcott's Omeros, Giuseppe Tornatore's Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, J. Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Louise Glück's Meadowlands. A selection of critical readings emphasizing modes of intertextuality and reader response theory will provide the theoretical frame for the seminar.
Score: 12.923483 Details | Listing | Web page