In CLASSICS 363 we will build a community of inquiry examining the intersections of race and Classics. Readings will include primary and secondary sources that will help us explore topics such as (but not limited to) cross-cultural interactions in Mediterranean antiquity, the social construction of race and ethnicity in antiquity and modernity, the influence of race (including constructions of whiteness) and racism on the development of the discipline of Classics in modern Europe and North America, and how the ancient Greeks and Romans can help us think about diversity and the concept of Western Civilization.

Women in literature, archaeology and history from the Bronze Age to the Roman Empire.

Roman slavery was a brutal and dehumanizing institution normalized by tradition and enforced by violence. Roman law went so far as to codify the fiction that the enslaved had no parents or ancestry, but lived experience was more complicated. The proximity of slaves and free persons within Roman families and their intimate interactions complicated ideological assertions of "the natural slave". In this course we begin with an overview of the Roman institution of slavery and the roles of slaves within families. We then focus on how Roman writers in various literary genres appropriate the social and legal categories "free" and "enslaved" to interrogate personal experience. We also examine other types of documentary evidence and the remains of material culture related to Roman slavery throughout the semester.

This course analyzes some of the most culturally prevalent forms of horror, terror, and violence in the ancient Roman world, including those associated with war, slavery, autocratic rule, and the spectacles of the amphitheater. In addition to examining relevant literary and documentary evidence from Roman antiquity, this course incorporates select writings in trauma studies, as well as modern comparative materials, that can provide frameworks for interpreting how both individuals and groups in the Roman world experienced and remediated the effects of trauma in their lives.

This course provides a survey of ancient Roman epic poetry (heroic, historical, didactic, and Ovidian), both within its unique cultural context and also as it was received by subsequent cultures and epochs.

The most famous texts you've never heard of, the ancient Greek and Roman novels are a rich and diverse group of texts that arose somewhat suddenly from mysterious origins, and include formulaic tales of love, sex and marriage, travel to bizarre foreign lands, magical transformations, riddles, zombies, and debauchery. These stories have sometimes been looked on as texts of inferior quality, a topic we will reconsider together, but these novels also laid the groundwork for more modern novels, as well as the works of Cervantes and Shakespeare and films like The Princess Bride and Indiana Jones. This course will use a Humanists perspective to critically read, analyze, discuss, and formulate arguments about select Ancient Greek and Roman novels. We may also include reading and consideration of similar texts from other ancient societies and/or the receptions of these novels in subsequent literature. As we read, we will consider when novels become literature, what makes books good, how we define genre and how genre impacts our reading, as well as what fiction can teach us about the history of love, sex, social class, women, the body, religion, and magic.

This course provides a survey of ancient Roman drama, comic and tragic, both within its unique cultural context and also as it was variously received by subsequent cultures and epochs.

This course is an introduction to the archaeology, art, architecture, history and literature of the evidence for ancient athletics in the Mediterranean world. A portion of the course is devoted to the archaeological, historical and literary evidence for the ancient Olympic Games. Course topics include: Sumerian athletics; Babylonian athletics, Egyptian athletics; Athletics in Homer; the rise of athletic festivals; Pan-Hellenic festivals; athletics and society; athletics and art; Greek athletic events; famous athletes and athletics; trainers, coaches and managers; athletic facilities; prizes and compensation; politics and Greek athletics; Macedonia and the Hellenistic age; athletics of the Etruscans and during the Roman Republic; athletics during the Roman empire.

This course focuses on the information about aspects of everyday life of the ancient Greeks and Romans that can be gleaned from archaeological evidence, as opposed to or in combination with written sources, and the various methodologies of the discipline of archaeology that allow us to reconstruct so much of the daily lives of ancient peoples. A comparative approach will be used so that students gain a sense of the shared cultural markers of these two civilizations, as well as their differences and the changes that took place in the Roman period. Topics to be considered are: house and home; clothing and body ornament; food and drink; partying and leisure activities; theater and spectacle; sport and competition; music and dance; shopping and money; schooling and children's lives; men's versus women's lives; the lives of slaves; and the worlds of artists and craftsmen.

An investigation of modern psychological theories and their relevance to ancient Greek and Roman myths. All readings in English.