Faculty of Arts & Sciences

The course provides a broad overview of the development of Roman art, architecture, and material culture from the time of the Republic through the Imperial period, to the age of Constantine. It offers basic knowledge about core categories of archaeological artifacts and remains within their topographical setting and within the context of Greek culture and society; it also includes issues of archaeological methods and problems of current research.

This seminar will explore Hellenistic Sicily between Egypt, Carthage, and Rome in its last century of autonomy. It is intended as a hands-on introduction to numismatic methodology: using Harvard Art Museums' collections, we will look at what coins can tell us about Sicily's ethnic populations, the history, and the cultural exchanges of that period, as well as ruler representation.

This seminar will explore the life and thought of Augustine of Hippo. As a canonical figure across disciplines, he has fascinated and influenced thinkers as different as Pascal and Derrida. It is hard to overestimate his influence on Western theological, political, and philosophical thought. In addition to considering the major works, we will give ample space to his letters and sermons, which together constitute one of the richest biographical archives in the ancient world. By exploring this portrait in a landscape we will gain a deeper insight into the cultural, religious, and intellectual forces that were then transforming the face of the Mediterranean world.

For the Greeks, "music" (mousike) encompassed song, instrumental performance, and dance, all of which pervaded their social, religious, economic, and personal lives. This seminar will be an ethnomusicological exploration of the different types of mousike within archaic and classical Greek society—not only their styles of performance, but also their conceptualizations as cultural practices. Although we lack recordings of live music and dance from this period, we do have an abundance of textual commentary on mousike as well as visual images of performance and instruments on Greek vases. The focus of the course will be the Greek musical imaginary, as we investigate how representations of mousike in Greek literature, philosophy, and art are linked with ideas about social structure, gender, ethnicity, education, the cosmos, and the self.

This seminar will examine the Roman literary representations of space and movement. Readings are organized around several central thematic nodes (including "territory," "roads," and "vehicles"). Is it possible to chart a transformation in how particular spaces are conceptualized in Latin literature through the transition from Republic to Empire? How do different literary genres contribute to-or offer competing visions of-the articulation of physical space? And how, in turn, do cultural practices involving space influence literary texts and genres? The emphasis will be on reading and interpreting individual Latin texts, with special attention given to scholarly approaches.

This course will cover the history of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean palace civilizations to the Roman conquest of the East Mediterranean. Attention will be paid to the major political, social, economic, and cultural transformations. Students will explore the wide variety of textual sources (in translation) and archaeological evidence out of which historians seek to understand ancient Greece.

An in-depth exploration of the cultural history of Sicily between the Bronze Age and the Norman conquest.

A study of the most Dionysiac of extant tragedies and its influence on the perception of Dionysos in literature, art and scholarship since Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy (1872). Topics for discussion include divine and human identities; the wine and its beneficiaries; ritual ecstasy; the theater and the mask; gender roles and sexuality; suffering, sacrament and Christianizing interpretations of Dionysos; polarities and otherness; Nietzsche on Dionysos; the Victorian Dionysos; Dionysos in 1933 and 1969; and modern adaptations of the Bakkhai.

To the Greek imagination, Egypt was a land of wealth, antiquity, and arcane knowledge. It was also a foreign and exotic world where everything was reversed. The contradictions and complexities of the Greek view of Egypt provide rich material for exploring the Hellenic response to foreign culture. This class will consider this material with particular attention to questions of how different ideas of Egypt developed and functioned in the Greek imagination, why this was so, and what this reveals about Greek culture and literature. It will explore texts from different genres and periods of Greek literature which present different views of Egypt. When possible, the historical and social situation, Greek material culture, and Egyptian evidence will be drawn in as important context. In studying these texts, we will especially consider how much their treatments of Egypt were conditioned by literary needs and/or how much they reflect real knowledge of Egyptian culture and history. By engaging with the theoretical literature on Greeks and the foreign, we will reevaluate the position of Egypt as an "other," a mirror, or an object of fascination.

This course is a comparative investigation of political and cultural aspects of the Byzantine Empire and western medieval polities. Students will use different types of evidence (textual, visual, and material) and read across a variety of literary and historical disciplines. The course will cover key topics like the transformation of ancient societies in the Mediterranean, medieval representations of authority, or the emergence of ethnic and religious identities. Particular emphasis will be placed on the exploration of the institutional and cultural factors which contributed to the formation of medieval political or intellectual discourses and practices.

Close study of a topic in Greco-Roman civilization and/or literature, culminating in the preparation of a substantial research paper (ca. 20 pages).

A practicum course in the craft of teaching. Topics include designing syllabi and assessments, responding to student writing, and guiding classroom discussion. Strategies will be applicable to courses working entirely in English as well as to those in the languages.

For students with little or no previous instruction in Greek who are seriously interested in making very rapid progress. All basic grammar of the normal first-year sequence (Greek Aa and Ab) and practice in reading prose. Students are prepared for Greek Ba or Bb.

For students with more than one year of formal training in Greek who do not place into Greek Ba. The course will combine a review of morphology and syntax with readings from prose authors. Students are prepared for Greek Bb or Ba.

An introduction to Homeric poetry: language, meter, formulae, and type scenes.

Composition in the prose style of various authors and genres, with selected readings representing the development of classical Greek prose and its analysis by scholars ancient and modern.

Close readings of two tragedies that deal with the same notorious family: Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' Electra. In addition to considering the plays' relationship with each other (and with Aeschylus' Libation Bearers), we will pay close attention to tragic diction, the construction of gender, dramatic conventions, and different styles of musical performance.

A survey of early Greek poetry and prose, with readings from Homer, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, and Herodotus. Discussions of genre in relation to performance, historical contexts, thematic (dis)continuities, oral tradition.

Close readings of the Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite, Apollo, Demeter, Dionysos and Hermes, with particular attention to hymnic convention, mythical narratives, and Greek ways of talking about the gods.

Readings of Greek prose and poetry ranging from archaic to imperial, with emphasis on quick comprehension of syntactic, stylistic, and generic features.

For students with little or no previous instruction in Latin who are seriously interested in making very rapid progress. All basic grammar of the normal first-year sequence (Latin Aa and Ab) and practice in reading prose. Students are prepared for Latin Ba, Bb, Bam, or Bbm.

For students with more than one year of formal training in Latin who do not place into Latin Ba. The course will combine a review of morphology and syntax with readings from prose authors. Students are prepared for Latin Ba or Bb.

Provides a bridge between study of grammar and reading of prose. After review of fundamentals, studies short selections of post-classical texts and authors such as Vulgate Bible, Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Abelard, and Dante.

Reading of selections of Medieval Latin poetry and introduction to quantitative meter and rhythmical poetry. Aims to facilitate the reading through study of short selections of post-classical poetry from authors such as Ambrose, Alcuin, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, and Aquinas.

Exercise in the prose style of different authors and periods, working within various subject areas and genres. As a guide to composition, we will read and analyze illustrative passages from major authors, including Cato, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Seneca, and Tacitus, as well as some distinctive styles in lesser-known authors.

Ovid's witty, exuberant, and learned epic of change and mortality encompasses the history of the world from its creation to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. This course examines the work's shaping of narrative and myth, its generic multiformity (embracing tragic, elegiac, comic, and pastoral motifs, as well as epic), and its equally complex vision of human existence.

This course focuses on Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics. We aim to read and interpret those texts, and to place them in literary and historical context.

The literature of the Republic and early Augustan period. Reading of extensive selections from the major authors, with lectures and discussion on the evolution and development of Latin prose and poetry. The course focuses on a variety of issues: Latin individuality through manipulation of inherited Greek forms, metrical and stylistic developments, evolving poetics, intertextuality and genre renewal, dynamic effects of social and political contexts.

Readings from Petronius' Satyricon and Apuleius' Metamorphoses, with attention to narrative technique, language and style, as well as consideration of the place of both texts in the history of the ancient novel.

Readings from the poetry of Prudentius, the most inventive and successful Latin poet of the post-classical world. In his powerful transposition of the Christian theological heritage into classical literary forms, Prudentius embodies the spirit of a world living through the Constantinian revolution. The unflagging popularity of his contributions to the allegorical epic, hymnody, and other genres make him an essential part of any literary history of Europe.

Introduces students to medieval Greek language and literature and, through selected readings, to important elements of Byzantine culture and society. Texts will be selected to provide a diachronic survey of a variety of literary genres, to reflect the diversity of Byzantine life and letters. Topics will include: biography/hagiography, historiography, sacred and secular poetry, letters, the novel, homilies and rhetorical texts. Choice of texts will correspond in part to the specific needs and interests of participants.

Aims at further development of skills in speaking, comprehension, reading, and writing. Selected readings in prose (literary and journalistic), poetry, folksongs, modern music, and theater serve as an introduction to aspects of modern Greek literature and culture. The course is conducted in Greek and focuses on topics selected by the instructor and the students in the first term. Grammar is reviewed in the context of readings. Instruction is supplemented by online instruction.

This survey course examines Greek cinema in a broader historical, cultural and sociopolitical context. From its beginnings (the silent era) to the present, and through a variety of perspectives and methods, students will not only become acquainted with the major trends, figures, and works of Greek cinema, but they will also develop an understanding of the major historical events of Greece. Particular emphasis will be placed on the work of Theo Angelopoulos and the documentary genre, with such representatives as Maria Iliou, Phillipos Koutsaftis, and Vassilis Loules. Through the lenses of everyday personal stories, the documentaries will shed light on the turbulent history of Greece.

Focuses on current debates on theoretical and methodological issues in the field. Topics to be discussed include: diaspora, reception, postcolonialism, cultural politics, translation.