Global Arc

Three historical themes shaped Byzantine Europe: the inheritance of Byzantine political ideology with its complex relations between state and church; the encounter with Western Europe; and the concept of political reform. Dreams of Byzantium, theocracies, and utopias of political modernity crossed a space of shared culture and created a sense of community despite political boundaries until the national idea built up frontiers of territorial identities. The fate of these ideas and their political fertility invites us to reflect on the concept of ideology and its instrumentality in the construction of the State.

An intensive interdisciplinary study of the evolution of a city, such as Athens, Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Alexandria, or Antioch, where Greek civilization flourished through successive periods, from antiquity to the present. A study of the form and the image of the city as seen in its monuments and urban fabric, as well as in the works of artists, writers, and travelers. Prerequisite: instructor's permission. Two 90-minute classes.

Designed to serve as an introduction to the language of modern Greece. Practice in speaking, grammatical analysis, composition, and graded reading. Four classes. No credit is given for HLS 101 unless followed by HLS 102.

A continuation of 101, aiming to develop the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing modern Greek in a cultural context. Classroom activities include videos, comprehension and grammar exercises, and discussions. Four classes.

Over the past 3,000 years, texts written in Greek played a central role for how people in Western Eurasia understood themselves, their society, their values, and the nature of the universe. Over the same three millennia, the Greek language played a central role in a variety of political communities, including ancient Athens, the empire of Alexander, the Roman empire, Byzantium, and the modern nation state of Greece. In this course, we will trace the history of these two phenomena: the political life and fortunes of Greek speakers and the cultural life of texts written in Greek, seeking to understand the relationship between the two.