Global Arc

This course will consider Greek tragedy, its ancient context, and modern responses by focusing on the three canonical Greek tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. We will also incorporate comparative readings from the history of drama and philosophy. Dramatic authors include Aristophanes, Seneca, Racine, Wole Soyinka, Sarah Kane, Anne Carson; philosophical authors include Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche. The course will conclude by considering recent activist uses of Greek tragedy, such as The Medea Project and Antigone in Ferguson.

This course will approach select classics of Greek political thought (Plato's Statesman and Republic, Aristotle's Politics) through a scrutiny of Greek social and political institutions. Students will be introduced to basic principles such as the distinction between free and unfree, the social and political status of male and female, and the distribution of political power and access to political participation in the Greek polis, in order to be in a position to observe how the ideas of Greek political thinkers map onto this reality.

Why did sex become so prominent in the moral imagination of early Christianity? How did the fate of the soul become so dependent on the sexual discipline of Christians? We will read a wide variety of late antique and early medieval texts which explore, prescribe, and aestheticize physical love and relate its consequences for sin and salvation in later Roman society. The course will emphasize literary as well as social history.

History courses usually cover the grand narratives based on the more traditional, literary evidence. Usually these courses leave no room for discussing how knowledge is created and the new and different methods for studying ancient history. This course instead looks at different questions to shed light on fruitful collaborations between scholars from different fields. Students will engage with STEM as they consider humanistic questions. Through different case studies and hands-on activities, students will learn about different scientific, technological, and mathematical methods and how knowledge of the past draws on multiple disciplines.

The astonishing preservation of Pompeii has captured popular imagination ever since it was rediscovered beginning in the 1700s. This course will uncover the urban fabric of the city. We will look at its layout, at public and private buildings and their decoration, and at the wider cultural, geographical and historical contexts. Using physical remains alongside texts in translation, we will explore aspects of the lives of the inhabitants, including entertainment, housing, religion, economy, slavery, political organization and expression, roles played by men and women inside and outside the family, and attitudes towards death.

This lecture course introduces students to the ways in which humanity has grappled with the existence of evil. The focus lies not on natural evils (such as earthquakes and epidemics) but on moral evil, in particular on the critical examination of the many theories and explanations of human wickedness. The course is highly interdisciplinary. It will take into account not only the literature and imagery of various genres and periods, but also feature invited lecturers from Religion, Philosophy and Psychology to empower the class to evaluate and critique contemporary views and prejudices about the nature and origin of moral evil.

Most often seen in opposition, Greco-Roman Classical culture and Christianity have a long history of reciprocal reliance. Neither would look as it does today without the other. Through readings and discussion of both Classical and Christian texts, as well as art and architecture, this course will inquire into the Classical roots of much Christian theology, ethics, cosmology, and values more broadly, while also considering the effect on Classics as a cultural cornerstone of societies beholden to these twin traditions.

Dramatists in the 20th and 21st centuries have repeatedly adapted classical literature to performance on the contemporary stage. In this course we'll ask after the particular uses, pleasures, and challenges of classical adaptation: why adapt ancient material in the first place? How have contemporary dramatists deviated from their sources, and how have they remained "true" to them? We'll consider these and other questions in a survey of a century of performance, ranging from early 20th-century modernism to Hadestown. All readings will be in translation. This course will include a trip to a stage production in New York in spring 2020.

Recent developments in the United States and throughout the world have exposed fault lines in how communities design and regulate forms of citizenship. But current debates over the assignment, withholding, or deprivation of citizen status have a long and violent history. In this course we will attempt to map a history of citizenship from the ancient Mediterranean world to the 21st century. Questions to be tackled include: who/what is a citizen? (How) are exclusion and marginalization wired into the historical legacies and present-day practices of citizenship?

Origins of popular rule at Athens, with special reference to the development of public institutions, social practices, and popular ideaology. Do democratic practices promote material flourishing and/or ethical conduct? Rethinking modern experiments with participatory democracy (utopian communities, workplace democracy, town meetings, teledemocracy, "leaderless movements"). Two 90-minute classes.