Course Schedule

CLAS 116B – Word Roots: Science and Medical Terminology

This course will focus on the history and structure of words including the use of Greek and Latin roots in the formation of technical terms in medicine and the sciences. Elements of word formation (prefixes, suffixes, and bases) will be intensively studied so that the words can by systematically analyzed and broken down into their component parts. Excellent preparation for standardized tests such as the GMAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT.

CLAS 150C1 – Pyramids and Mummies: The Pharaoh and Ancient Egyptian Society

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis · Gen Ed: Tier 1 Individuals & Societies/150 · Gen Ed Attribute: Diversity and Equity, US · Gen Ed Attribute: Writing · Gen Ed: Building Connections

Pyramids and Mummies focuses on the role of the pharaoh in ancient Egyptian Society and its portrayal in modern culture. It centers on the overarching question of how political rulers consolidate, exert, and maintain political power over their constituent populations. To do this, Pyramids and Mummies takes an interdisciplinary approach to Egyptian history, examining it from Natural Science, Social Science, Arts, and Humanities perspectives, assessing how Egyptian pharaohs utilized a diverse array of tactics to rule their kingdom. This course then moves from ancient to modern, analyzing the portrayal of ancient Egyptian kingship in the modern world, with a special focus on the ways in which issues of race, ethnicity, diversity, and equity are addressed in cinematic adaptations of ancient Egyptian culture and kingship. Upon completing this course, students will be able to critically analyze issues of political rule from a variety of disciplinary lenses, and synthesize these multifaceted strategies in clear, concise, and powerful written prose, and they will be able to address issues of race, equity, and inclusion in the reception and adaptation of ancient Egyptian culture.

CLAS 160B1 – Meet the Ancients: Gateway to Greece and Rome

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160 · Gen Ed Attribute: Writing · Gen Ed Attribute: World Cultures and Societies · Gen Ed: Building Connections

Journey into the past to discover the worlds of the ancient Greeks and Romans. From democracy and republicanism to literature, philosophy and art, the contributions of these two cultures serve as the foundation for much of what has been described as ""western"" culture. This course explores who these peoples were, how these civilizations developed, what ideas and institutions they created, and why the Greeks and Romans matter today.

Through this exploration into the Greco-Roman world, this course builds connections between the multiple types of evidence that scholars draw upon to paint a picture of the ancient past. Close readings of texts provide a humanistic perspective on classical culture; archaeological data inform us about social scientific trends in demography and economics; environmental evidence from ice cores, botanical remains, and soil samples enable a natural science perspective on the past; and some of the world's most famous objects--from the Venus di Milo to Grecian vases--allow for artistic insights. In this course, students will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each disciplinary approach to understanding the past, and ultimately weave together multiple strands of evidence to create their signature assignment.

Upon completing "Meet the Ancients", students will not only have a better understanding of Greco-Roman history and culture, they will, above all, have a deeper understanding of the different perspectives used to approach ancient history and the skills to evaluate and synthesize diverse types of evidence.

CLAS 160D2 – Classical Mythology: Ancient Stories and What they Tell Us

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160 · Gen Ed Attribute: Writing · Gen Ed Attribute: World Cultures and Societies · Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

The myths, legends, and folktales of the Greeks, Romans and the peoples of the ancient Near East have remained popular for thousands of years. Together we'll not only learn about these stories themselves, but also think about why these stories are so popular, where they came from, and what insights they give us into the various people and cultures who created and reinterpreted them across the millennia.

CLAS 204 – Ancient History: Greek History

Cross Listed

A political, social and cultural history of Greek civilization from the Bronze Age to the death of Alexander the Great.

CLAS 205 – Ancient History: Roman History

Cross Listed

This course offers a survey of Roman History from the prehistoric settlements in the area of the Seven Hills to the deterioration of the western Empire in the fifth century C.E. Special topics of interest include the material culture of the Roman world; the use of images in the pursuit of political agendas; classical notions of the divine; and concepts of gender, power, and identity. Popular representations of ancient Rome, specifically in film, will provide another area of consideration for comparison throughout the semester.

CLAS 260 – Ancient Philosophy

Cross Listed · Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities · Gen Ed Attribute: Writing · Gen Ed Attribute: World Cultures and Societies · Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

Survey of Greek philosophy, from the pre-Socratic philosophers through Plato and Aristotle to post-Aristotelian philosophers, such as the Stoics, Epicureans. Questions to be explored include:
What is it to be the cause of something? What is it to be responsible in a world in which everything has a cause? What is it to learn something and to know something? Why do we live in groups, and why are those groups politically organized? What is it to live one's life well? What is it that drives us to do what we do? What is the world ultimately made of? Students will gain familiarity with theories about the nature of human experience among major schools of thought in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.

CLAS 280 – Introduction to the Bible: New Testament

Cross Listed · Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities · Gen Ed Attribute: World Cultures and Societies · Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

This course introduces students to the New Testament in light of the contexts in which it was written and compiled, and as a window into reconstructing the world of early Christianity. The course will also examine how various Christian communities have understood the meaning and authority of the New Testament.

CLAS 300 – The Classical Ideal: From Greece and Rome through the 1930s

Cross Listed · Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities · Gen Ed Attribute: Writing · Gen Ed Attribute: World Cultures and Societies · Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

This is a course that explores the world of ancient Athens and Rome as it was viewed and interpreted in later periods. The learning activities inspire students to critically analyze and incorporate past and current art, historical, archaeological and cultural perspectives on ancient Greek life and culture. Then we learn about how people in America in the 1930s were inspired by ancient Greece. Students are expected to apply their knowledge by analyzing movies made in this period which focus on presenting classical culture in modern guise, especially those by the only major woman director of the era: Dorothy Arzner. Next, we look at ancient Rome. Since Americans have traditionally identified more with ancient Rome, we dedicate more time to the analysis of Rome and its influence. Finally, we look at the 1930s' vogue for the symbolism of classical culture in Fascist Italy under Mussolini and in Nazi Germany under Hitler.

CLAS 301A – The Literature of the Ancient Greeks: From Homer to the Novel

Writing Emphasis Course

Survey of the major authors and works of ancient Greece: from Homer to the Greek novel. All readings in English.

CLAS 305 – Greek and Roman Religion

Cross Listed · Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies · Gen Ed Attribute: World Cultures and Societies · Gen Ed: Building Connections · Writing Emphasis Course

Religious beliefs and cult practices in ancient Greece and Rome. All readings in English.

CLAS 335 – The Roman Empire: Rulers and Ruled

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities · Gen Ed Attribute: Writing · Gen Ed Attribute: World Cultures and Societies · Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

In this course, we will examine Rome and its Empire from several points of view and across Roman history. During this semester we will deal with those who ruled the empire, and those who were ruled by the Emperors. Through this class, we will explore how Romans thought about their own rule, and how citizens, subjects, and outsiders reacted to (and against) the Roman Empire.

CLAS 352 – Pirates, Witches, Barbarians, and True Love: The Ancient Novel

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities · Gen Ed Attribute: Writing · Gen Ed Attribute: World Cultures and Societies · Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist · Writing Emphasis Course

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.

CLAS 403A – History of Greece: Democracy, War, and Empire in the 5th Century BCE

Cross Listed

Beginning with Herodotus' history of the Persian Wars and concluding with Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War, you will read and discuss various types of ancient sources in order to write your own history of the growth of democracy, the spread of empire, and the persistence of war in Classical Greece.

CLAS 404C – Cleopatra: Power, Passion, Propaganda

Cross Listed

This course focuses on Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE), the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and one of the best-known women in history and a key powerbroker during a period of important political change, one with enduring repercussions for the western world. She has been, however, deliberately memorialized as a "romantic" agent, a deployer of "feminine wiles", whose gender and political toolbox rightly doomed her efforts to failure. Students will interrogate the process of transforming a historical individual into an object lesson, a trope of femininity, and a cinematic legend, unpacking the messages crafted for a range of audiences and purposes by multiple creators, including Cleopatra herself. We begin with the historical background of the Hellenistic period, cosmopolitan and multicultural, focusing especially on the dynamism of women in the ideology of royal power and as image-makers in their own right, developing special forms for female authority and female patronage. A number of earlier Cleopatras establish context and particular precedents, creating official personae to engage effective interactions with fundamental groups; these include the resilient Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra II (r. 175-116 BCE) and Cleopatra Thea, token in a dynastic alliance who became Great Queen of Syria, dominating the Seleucid throne for a generation. Students will then sift through the evidence for Cleopatra VII, both the contentious (and largely hostile) material for her Mediterranean activities as well as the Egyptian record that may represent the specific efforts of the queen herself, utilizing then-ancient symbol and ritual to assert her legitimate imperial authority and structure her collaboration with major stakeholders in the Nile realm. The last section of the course looks to the lingering memory of Cleopatra long after her death, closely examining images in drama, art, and film to explore how the story of Cleopatra has been crafted and recrafted to represent different "truths" about sex, power, and identity.

CLAS 414 – Narrating Memory: The Greek and Roman Historians

Writing Emphasis Course

This course will examine the histories written by ancient Greeks and Romans, as well as the broader questions of historiography. What did history mean to the ancients, and what techniques did they use to "bear witness" to the past? How do the writings of ancient historians inform our understanding of classical antiquity? Ancient Greek and Roman historians to be covered include Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, and Tacitus.

CLAS 446A – Mapping Ancient Cities

Cross Listed · Engagement: Discovery · Engagement: Innovation and Creativity

The course will introduce the student to the history, theory and archaeological evidence for city and landscape planning from the Minoan, Etruscan, Greek and Roman periods. In addition the course will consider some of the most modern techniques (digital cartography, remote sensing and GIS) in the study of ancient cities and will offer the student the opportunity to learn and practice a number of these modern techniques, including the use of AutoCAD.

CLAS 452 – Etruscan Art and Archaeology

Cross Listed · Writing Emphasis Course

This course surveys the art and archaeology of the Etruscan culture from the question of its origins in the Bronze Age to its absorption by the Romans in the first century A.D. Questions of DNA analysis and origin theory, art and architecture, history, interface with the Romans, diversity of individual cities, confederation centers and language will also be discussed.

CLAS 472A – Ancient Philosophy

Cross Listed

A philosophical introduction to the major works of Plato.

CLAS 474 – Archaeological Science

Cross Listed

To fully explore and understand the ways that past civilizations and societies interacted with the environment, innovated, thrived or survived, we need a toolkit as diverse as the different aspects of human life. In this course, you will learn the basic principles behind the wide range of scientific techniques used to provide clues about the human past. Through a series of case studies from various times and places around the world you will gain an overview of how methods combine to reveal new insights and explore the potential, limitations and future directions for such work.

CLAS 491 – Preceptorship

Specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of instruction and practice in actual service in a department, program, or discipline. Requires faculty member approval, preceptor application on file with department.

CLAS 498H – Honors Thesis

Writing Emphasis Course

An honors thesis is required of all the students graduating with honors. Students ordinarily sign up for this course as a two-semester sequence. The first semester the student performs research under the supervision of a faculty member; the second semester the student writes an honors thesis.

GRK 101 – Elementary Classical Greek I

Introduction to ancient Greek for students of the Bible and of the classical authors.

GRK 201 – Intermediate Classical Greek I

Selections from Greek prose texts.

GRK 402 – Greek Reading Course

Writing Emphasis Course

Readings in major Greek authors including Homer, Plato, and the historians and dramatists.

LAT 101 – Elementary Latin I

An introduction to the basic morphology, syntax and vocabulary of Latin through reading and composition.

LAT 102 – Elementary Latin II

SUN# LAT 1102 - Beginning Latin II

A second semester introduction to the basic morphology, syntax and vocabulary of Latin through reading and composition.

LAT 201 – Intermediate Latin I

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities · SUN# LAT 2201 - Intermediate Latin I

Review of Latin grammar with readings from prose writers.

LAT 202 – Intermediate Latin II

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities · SUN# LAT 2202 - Intermediate Latin II

Review of Latin grammar with readings from the poetry of Virgil's Aeneid.

LAT 400 – Prose of the Roman Republic

Extended readings from Sallust, Cicero and Caesar with some grammatical review; development of skills in rapid readings and sight reading.

LAT 401 – Latin Reading Course

Writing Emphasis Course

Readings in one of the following: epic, lyric, drama, history, oratory, satire, epistles, novel, philosophical, technical or medieval literature.