Global Arc

Where does medicine begin in the West? In this course, we will go back to the earliest medical texts written in ancient Greece that try to give an account of disease as a natural phenomenon that happens inside the biological body. Our aim is not simply to reconstruct the theories of health and disease that these authors put forth. It is also to see the kinds of questions and problems that arise when healers take responsibility for the care and treatment of bodies.

What are the features of persuasive political speech? The reliance of democratic politics on memorable oratory stems from traditions dating back to ancient Greece and Rome which were revived in the modern era of parliamentary debates and stump speeches. This course will analyze the rhetorical structure of famous political speeches over time in a bid to better understand the potent mixture of aesthetics and ideology that characterizes political rhetoric, as well as the equally long tradition of regarding political rhetoric as insincere and unscrupulous. Students will try their hand at political speech-writing and oratory in class.

An introduction to the basic principles of a major system of civil law. The course will trace the beginnings of these legal principles in the society that produced them in the first half of the course, and will examine the afterlife of the Roman legal system - with an emphasis on colonial contexts - in the second half.

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.