Spring 2010 Course Descriptions

INTRO ROMAN CIV

Classics 10B Section 1 (4 units)

SAILOR, D

This course offers an exploration of the literature, history, and society of the ancient Romans. We’ll be reading parts of a wide variety of works dating from a period that extends from the early second century BCE to the mid-second century CE: comedies by Plautus; histories by Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus; speeches and letters by Cicero; epic poems by Vergil and Ovid; and novels by Petronius and Apuleius. Our investigation of these works within their historical and cultural context will leave us with an enhanced sense of some important and exciting aspects of Roman civilization. Several short response papers, one 6-8 page essay, midterm, final. Participation in discussion sections is an important part of this class.

ELEM ROMAN ARCH

Classics 17B Section 1 (4 units)

PEÑA, J T

This course provides undergraduate students with an introduction to the archaeology of the ancient Romans from Rome’s origins in the Iron Age down to the disintegration of the Roman empire in the sixth century A.D.  It aims to familiarize students with the more significant sites, monuments, artifact classes and works of art, and to introduce students to the important research questions in Roman archaeology, providing them with an appreciation of the methods that archaeologists employ to address these problems.

FRESHMAN SEMINARS: Apuleius' 'Golden Ass' and Augustine's 'Confessions'

Classics 24 Section 1 (1 units)

SAILOR, D

Apuleius' Golden Ass is a Roman novel of the second century AD that tells of a man's magical transformation into an ass, his experiences as he travels around in that new form, and his eventual rescue. Augustine's Confessions are an account offered by a fifth century AD bishop of his lascivious and ambitious youth and his eventual conversion to Christianity. By reading alongside each other these two, superficially rather different, books, we will explore a central preoccupation that they share: the relationship between life and text, between living and reading and writing. We'll look at the idea of the world as a text to be interpreted, at storytelling as a way of affecting the world, at the tension between reading for pleasure and reading for edification, at the dangers and ironies of using stories as a guide for life, and at ancient ideas of fiction and truth.

FRESHMAN SEMINARS: "CLEOPATRAS"

Classics 24 Section 2 (1 units)

HICKEY, T M

In this seminar we will explore representations of Cleopatra from Antiquity to the present day; our sources will include literature, art, movies, and advertising. The only prerequisite is an interest in this (in)famous queen and our extraordinarily persistent fascination with her.

FRESHMAN SEMINARS: "Helens"

Classics 24 Section 3 (1 units)

KURKE, L V

This course will focus on the figure of Helen in classical Greek texts. Helen is a strange figure in Greek mythology—the only daughter born to Zeus and a mortal woman, a being of uncanny and terrible beauty, and a universal object of desire.  I am particularly interested in exploring how Helen is associated with mimesis, and how persistently she destabilizes the narratives in which she appears.  In narrative terms, she is a locus of ambiguity; in anthropological terms, she is a sign exchanged between men—but a sign that has become wayward and uncontrollable.  I wish to consider the intersection of these social and narrative problematics.  We will trace her portrayal through excerpts of Homer, Greek lyric, tragedy, and rhetorical texts.

CLASSIC MYTHS

Classics 28 Section 1 (4 units)

BULLOCH, A W

A study of the society, values and outlook on life of the ancient Greeks as expressed in their mythology; their views on life, birth, marriage, death, sex and sexuality; on culture and civilization, the origin and meaning of the world, and their use of myth to think about, and give order to, human experience. The course will cover the major myths, the primary literary sources for them, and the historical and religious context, and will include some emphasis on culture, festival and ceremony. There will be regular presentation in class of ancillary visual material (vase paintings, sculpture, sanctuaries and other sites, and video material on the archaeology, history, culture and landscape setting of the ancient Greek world).

Website:  http://www.GreekMyth.org

GREEK TRAGEDY

Classics 35 Section 1 (4 units)

SYED, Y

Greek tragedy with readings of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Classics 36 Section 1 (4 units)

LONG, A A

This course is an introduction to Greek philosophy, focusing on ethics, psychology, and political thought.  After a historical orientation, we shall study the material chronologically: starting with Socrates and the Sophists (on whom early dialogues of Plato are the main source), then concentrating on Plato's Republic and selections of Aristotle's Ethics and Politics, and concluding with Cicero, On duties and selections from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

ANCIENT METRICS

Classics 110 Section 1 (2 units)

BULLOCH, A W

A systematic introduction to, and survey of, the basics of Greek and Latin metrics and versification: prosody, dactylic metres, iambic metres, lyric metres of all kinds, with analysis of texts by all major authors from Homer to Horace. Emphasis will be on the practice of analysis and understanding, rather than abstract theory or history, and the object of the course is to give a thorough grounding in the principles of versification as practised by ancient authors. The course should equip anyone who has taken it to analyse and understand any (reasonably mainstream) verse text that they encounter.

This course is unlikely to be offered again before 2013.

TOPICS: "DEMOCRATS VS. OLIGARCHS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY"

Classics 130 Section 1 (4 units)

PAPAZARKADAS, N

Athens had a King, but she was not a monarchy. Why? Sparta had two Kings, but she was not a monarchy either. Why? Both cities purported to hate tyranny, yet they acted tyrannically whenever they could. Is this as paradoxical as it seems? In this course we shall study in detail the way ancient democracies and oligarchies functioned. Where did the Athenian assembly meet and when? How did citizens vote and how good was their cooperation with the Council? What were the powers of the citizen assembly of Sparta, of the five magistrates called ephors, and of the Council of the Elders? How did the two cities organize their armies, their finances, their religious festivals? And how different were the other big democracies and oligarchies of ancient Greece (e.g. Argos, Thebes, Corinth). Finally we shall investigate constitutional developments in the western Mediterranean, focusing on the Roman Republic. We shall read the so-called Old Oligarch (‘Constitution of the Athenians’), Xenophon (‘Constitution of the Spartans’), Aristotle (‘Athenian Constitution’), Cicero (‘Treatise on the Commonwealth’), Plutarch (‘Life of Lycurgus’), inscriptions (decrees and laws), and excerpts from other authors (e.g. Polybius, Pausanias). Archaeological evidence (law courts, theaters, council houses) will also be examined.

TOPICS: "RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD"

Classics 130 Section 2 (4 units)

MCCARTHY, K

Topic to vary from year to year. No knowledge of Greek or Latin required; but provision will be made for students who wish to study some of the readings in the original language. Enrollment limited.
 

GENDER ANC WORLD

Classics 161 Section 1 (4 units)

GRIFFITH, M

In this course, we shall look at the performance practices and educational institutions (broadly conceived) through which girls and boys in ancient Greece were turned into women and men and in general how gender categories were defined and reinforced (or challenged). Through an examination of myths and religious ceremonies (including rites of passage), military and athletic trainings, musical, dramatic, and rhetorical performances, and courtship and sexual bahaviors (both homo- and hetero-sexual), as well as the emergent institution of the "school" itself, we will explore the various ways in which male and female identities were imagined, represented, formed, reinforced, and institutionalized during the Archaic and Classical periods (roughly 800 BCE - 200 CE).

Among the ancient texts that we shall read (all in English translation) are the following: Hesiod The Works and Days; the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; selections from Sappho and other lyric poets; Aeschylus The Suppliant Women; Sophocles Antigone, The Women of Trachis; Euripides Hippolytus, The Trojan Women; Aristophanes The Thesmophoriazusae; selections from the Hippocratic medical writings; Plato The Symposium, and parts of The Laws; selections from Aristotle's Politics and Quintilian's Institutions of Oratory; and short works by Xenophon, Plutarch, Lucian, and St Paul. Images and videos will be helpful too for presenting some of the ancient Greek material, especially performances of drama. In addition, we will consider some modern critical discussions of gender, sexuality, performance, identity, and education, which provide useful frameworks for consideration of this ancient material.

Enroll in one discussion section:
101: Fri 12-1, 221 Wheeler, CCN 14820
102: Fri 1-2, 80 Barrows, CCN 14823
103: Fri 1-2, 321 Haviland, CCN 14826
Also listed as TDPS 121, section 1.

TOP AND MON

Classics 175D Section 1 (4 units)

PEÑA, J T

This course provides advanced undergraduates with a broad survey of the remains of the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, considering how archaeologists and historians employ this evidence to illuminate various aspects of the social and economic life of Roman Italy.

SURVEY GREEK LIT

Classics 201B Section 1 (4 units)

GRIFFITH, M

A sequence of readings and lectures on Greek literature. Offered alternate years.

CLASSIC ARCHAE/ART

Classics C204 Section 1 (4 units)

STEWART, A F

Co-taught with Professor Christopher Hallett

This seminar, which is offered biennially, is intended to introduce graduate students - both archaeologists and non-archaeologists - to the discipline of classical archaeology, its history and evolution, and its research tools and bibliography.  Since it is both impossible and undesirable to attempt to cover the entire discipline in one semester, after two introductory lectures on the history of the field, we will address a selection of topics that seems representative of its concerns.  Examples of possible topics (past, present, and future) are:

(1) A context: Cahill, Household and City organization at Olynthus;
(2) A discovery: the Cleveland Apollo Sauroktonos;
(3) Epigraphy and topography: the Hekatompedon inscription;
(4) Artists and attribution: Beazley's method;
(5) Chronology in Greek art: "stylistic dating" in vase-painting and/or sculpture;
(6) Text and image: Small, The Parallel Worlds of Ancient Greek Art and Text;
(7) Architecture: Barletta, The Origins of the Greek Architectural Orders
(8) Ancient criticism: the new Poseidippos papyrus;
(9) Gender: Praxiteles' Knidia;
(10) A genre: When did Greek portraiture begin?
(11) Chronology in Roman art: Zeitgesicht--the 'period face';
(12) Reception: identifying the intended audience for Roman public monuments;
(13) Domestic decoration and the social historian: Roman painted interiors as indicators of late Republican and early imperial mentalité?
(14) Ethnic Identity and material culture: the mummy portraits of Roman Egypt;
(15) Tradition and Originality in Roman building: Mark Wilson Jones's, Principles of Roman Architecture;
(16) Interpreting style in Roman art: late antique portrait images;

ARCHAIC GRK POETRY: Wisdom Literature/Didactic Poetry

Classics 211 Section 1 (2 units)

KURKE, L V

This course will focus on Greek didactic poetry/wisdom literature, considering issues of poetics, genre, social/institutional structures, and ideology.  We will start with Hesiod and Theognis, then consider excerpts from Homer and Pindar, then move to later Greek material.  My main interests are in the aesthetics/poetics of didactic poetry—how do we account for its organization and formal structures?—and in its ideological functions.  How does didactic poetry interpellate subjects?  What kind of subjects does it interpellate, and does this change over time?  How does didactic poetry fit into the broader practical and performative traditions of Greek “wisdom” (sophia)?  Do wisdom traditions in performance provide a space for contestation among different ideological positions?

We will spend 7-8 weeks familiarizing ourselves with Hesiod, the traditions of mythological Hypothêkai, and the corpus of Theognidea, before turning to traditions of the Seven Sages, sophistic challenges to the Old Paideia, and the playing out of some didactic themes and issues in a representative tragedy.  Finally, I would like to end with the anonymous Life of Aesop as a kind of parody or deconstruction of the Wisdom tradition.

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

Classics 218 Section 1 (2 units)

VON STADEN, H

Study of PreSocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic Philosophy, or other topics in ancient Greek philosophy through Plotinus.

PAPYROLOGY

Classics 225 Section 1 (2 units)

HICKEY, T M

This year¹s version of the course is an introduction to Greek papyrology; its ultimate aim is the development of the skills required to edit Greek texts on papyrus. During the first two thirds of the course we shall study selected papyri  from nine important papyrological archives; these facsimiles and editions will provide ample exposure to the vital koine of Graeco-Roman Egypt and allow practice with a variety of handwritings. During this same period participants will also begin preparing editions of two papyri that were excavated within the temenos of the crocodile god Soknebtunis. In the final third of the semester, we will workshop these texts. Each participant will have the option to publish her/his editions in a forthcoming volume of the Tebtunis Papyri (or elsewhere, as appropriate).

Fulfills the prerequisite requirement for the Berkeley-Oxford Papyrology Seminar (concerning new fragments of tragedy) in summer 2010.

LATIN POETRY

Classics 230 Section 1 (2 units)

MCCARTHY, K

Study of Lucretius, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, or other topics in Latin poetry from Ennius to Juvenal.

ELEMENTARY GREEK

Greek 2 Section 1 (4 units)

PAPAZARKADAS, N

Beginners course

INTENSIVE ELEMENTARY GREEK

Greek 10 Section 1 (8 units)

PASS, D B

Beginners' course (intensive); equivalent to Greek 1-2

HOMER

Greek 101 Section 1 (4 units)

FOSTER, M C

Selected readings in the Iliad or Odyssey

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

Greek 123 Section 1 (4 units)

LONG, A A

In this course we shall read in Greek and discuss Plato's Phaedrus . The work is both a literary masterpiece and a philosophical treasure-house.  Its themes include erotic love, rhetoric, psychology, metaphysics, and dialectic, and it also contains Plato's most engaging myth.  Whether, or how, all these themes fit together is a fascinating question, which will help to orient our progress through the text.

ELEMENTARY LATIN

Latin 1 Section 1 (4 units)

SHU, D HJ

Beginners course

ELEMENTARY LATIN

Latin 1 Section 2 (4 units)

LANIER, J T

Beginners' course.

ELEMENTARY LATIN

Latin 1 Section 3 (4 units)

WUESTE, E A

Beginners' course

ELEMENTARY LATIN

Latin 1 Section 4 (4 units)

PEARSON, J E

Beginners' course

ELEMENTARY LATIN

Latin 2 Section 1 (4 units)

DOYLE, T Z

Beginners course

ELEMENTARY LATIN

Latin 2 Section 2 (4 units)

EVANS, J

Beginners course

LATIN COMPOSITION

Latin 40 Section 1 (4 units)

HENDRICKSON, T G

The primary purpose of this course is to give you a firmer foundation in classical Latin prose through composition and other exercises (especially sight-reading). Composition gives you the opportunity to learn from active use. We will start with short sentences and build up to longer passages. The focus will always be on writing correct Latin, but as we go along increasing attention will be paid to writing a more stylistically sophisticated, generically appropriate Latin prose. It is also a goal of this class to give you an overview of the history of Latin prose, with a focus on understanding the most important genres, authors, and trends. You will also learn how to use some of the basic reference works on Latin grammar, literature, historical linguistics.

REPUBLICAN PROSE

Latin 100 Section 1 (4 units)

AVINGER, E

Selected readings in Caesar, Sallust, and Cicero; some review of grammar.

VERGIL

Latin 101 Section 1 (4 units)

SYED, Y

Selected readings from Vergil.

LYRIC AND SOCIETY

Latin 102 Section 1 (4 units)

FURIYA, S

Lyric poems of Catullus and Horace in their literary and social context, with attention to questions of genre, meter, poetic technique, lyric structure, lyric voice. 80-100 lines of Latin per week. Prerequisites: LAT 100, 102.

LATIN EPIC

Latin 119 Section 1 (4 units)

FURIYA, S

The topic this year will be Ovid's Metamorphoses, with selected episodes read in Latin, the remainder in translation. Ovid is a storyteller of unsurpassed sophistication, and Metamorphoses is at once a bravura performance of narrative possibilities and a brilliant analysis of the social, erotic, and political implications of narrative. The goal of the course is to engage this narratological abundance by taking up various reading strategies (e.g., local vs. contextualizing approaches) and exploring a range of questions: Why do people tell stories, and what do they desire from them? How do readers determine the "moral of the story"? What is the relation between poetic authorship and political authority?

 200-250 lines of Latin per week.

RDGS IN MED LATIN

Latin 155A Section 1 (4 units)

BEZNER, F

Latin Lyrics from the High Middle Ages: the “Carmina Burana”

In this course, we will study the most important collection of medieval Latin secular lyrics from the High Middle Ages, the so-called “Carmina Burana”. These poems (close to 300) were all written during one of the most creative, innovative, and tension-ridden periods in the Middle Ages, the “Renaissance of the Twelfth Century”, and can be separated into three main groups: a first group contains satirical poems which are directed against the ecclesiastical establishment, against greed, corruption and hypocrisy. A second group consists of love poems – poems which often draw on the poetry of Ovid and explore the emotions of those falling in love. Finally, the third group consists of poetry (apparently) written by a rebellious group of poets (the “Vagantes”) who in their poems adopted the personae (or masks) of hypocrites, false beggars, and outlaws…

Emphasis in our course will be on reading, translating, and analyzing these fascinating poems, which are markedly different from Ancient Latin poetry. We will also discuss the manuscript of the “Carmina Burana” and explore the complex relationship between these poems and their cultural and intellectual contexts.

All texts and further materials will be made available in a course reader (on bspace).