Gateway Courses

Explore the heroic and divine in the literature, mythology, and culture of archaic Greece via an interdisciplinary approach to the study of individuals and society with illustrated lectures. Readings in translation of Homer, Hesiod, and the poets of lyric and tragedy.

Why do imperialists conquer people? Why do some people resist while others collaborate? This course tries to answer these questions by looking at some of the world's earliest empires. The main focus is on the expansion of the Assyrian and Persian Empires between 900 and 300 BC and the consequences for the ancient Jews, Egyptians, and Greeks. The main readings come from the Bible, Herodotus, and Assyrian and Persian royal inscriptions, and the course combines historical and archaeological data with social scientific approaches.

How did a tiny village create a huge empire and shape the world, and why did it fail? This course explores the full panoply of Roman history, imperialism, politics, social life, economic growth, and religious change.

Gods and heroes, fate and free choice, gender conflict, the justice or injustice of the universe: these are just some of the fundamental human issues that we will explore in about ten of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Introductory courses to the languages of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Learn to read the epic poetry of Homer, the lyric poetry of Sappho, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, Greek tragedy and so much more. On the Latin side, learn to read the epic poetry of Virgil, the love elegy of Propertius and Ovid, the orations of Cicero, the satire of Juvenal, the theology of Augustine, and so much more. No previous knowledge of Greek or Latin is assumed.

In modern America, gladiators are powerful representatives of ancient Rome (Spartacus, Gladiator). In the Roman world, gladiators were mostly slaves and reviled, barred from certain positions in society and doomed to short and dangerous lives. A first goal of this course is to analyze Roman society not from the top down, from the perspective of politicians, generals and the literary elite, but from the bottom up, from the perspective of gladiators and the ordinary people in the stands. A second goal is to learn how work with very different kinds of evidence: bone injuries, ancient weapons, gladiator burials, laws, graffiti written by gladiators or their fans, visual images of gladiatorial combats, and the intricate architecture and social control of the amphitheater. A final goal is to think critically about modern ideas of Roman bloodthirst. Are these ideas justified, given the ancient evidence?

Explore the famous Greek lyric poet Sappho by reading her surviving fragments in English and examining the traditions referring to or fantasizing about her disputed life. In this class we investigate how Sappho’s poetry and legend inspired women authors and male poets such as Swinburne, Baudelaire, and Pound. We also consider paintings inspired by Sappho in ancient and modern times, as well as composers who put her poetry to music.

Why do we care about shipwrecks? What can sunken sites and abandoned ports tell us about our past? Focusing primarily on the archaeological record of shipwrecks and harbors, along with literary evidence and contemporary theory, this course examines how and why ancient mariners ventured across the "wine-dark seas" of the Mediterranean for travel, warfare, pilgrimage, and especially commerce. We will explore interdisciplinary approaches to the development of maritime contacts and communication from the Bronze Age through the end of Roman era. At the same time, we will engage with practical techniques of maritime archaeology, which allows us to explore the material record first hand.

This course is an introduction to Roman rhetoric, Cicero's Rome, and the active practice of speaking well. Participants read a short rhetorical treatise by Cicero, analyze one of his speeches as well as more recent ones by, e.g., Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Obama, and watch their oratorical performances. During the remainder of the term they practice rhetoric, prepare and deliver in class two (short) speeches, and write an essay.

Given the importance of art to all aspects of their lives, the Greeks had reason to respect their artists. Yet potters, painters and even sculptors possessed little social standing. Why did the Greeks value the work of craftsmen but not the men themselves? Why did Herodotus dismiss those who worked with their hands as "mechanics?" What prompted Homer to claim that "there is no greater glory for a man than what he achieves with his own hands," provided that he was throwing a discus and not a vase on a wheel? Painted pottery was essential to the religious and secular lives of the Greeks. Libations to the gods and to the dead required vessels from which to pour them. Economic prosperity depended on the export of wine and oil in durable clay containers. At home, depictions of gods and heroes on vases reinforced Greek values and helped parents to educate their children. Vases depicting Dionysian excess were produced for elite symposia, from which those who potted and painted them were excluded. Sculptors were less lowly but still regarded as "mechanics," with soft bodies and soft minds (Xenophon), "indifferent to higher things" (Plutarch). The seminar addresses such issues as we work to acknowledge our own privilege and biases.

Explore themes on the Roman Empire and its decline from the 1st through the 5th centuries C.E.. What was the political and military glue that held this diverse, multi-ethnic empire together? What were the bases of wealth and how was it distributed? What were the possibilities and limits of economic growth? How integrated was it in culture and religion? What were the causes and consequences of the conversion to Christianity? Why did the Empire fall in the West? How suitable is the analogy of the U.S. in the 21st century?

Long-term, comparative and archaeological view of urban planning and design. Cities are the fastest changing components of the human landscape and are challenging our relationships with nature. They are the historical loci of innovation and change, are cultural hotspots, and present a tremendous challenge through growth, industrial development, the consumption of goods and materials. We will unpack such topics by tracking the genealogy of qualities of life in the ancient Near Eastern city states and those of Graeco-Roman antiquity, with reference also to prehistoric built environments and cities in the Indus Valley and through the Americas. The class takes an explicitly human-centered view of urban design and one that emphasizes long term processes.

Contemporary medical practice traces its origins to the creation of scientific medicine by Greek doctors such as Hippocrates and Galen. Is this something of which modern medicine can be proud? In this class we explore the scientific achievements and ethical limitations of ancient medicine when scientific medicine was no more than another form of alternative medicine. Scientific medicine competed in a marketplace of ideas where the boundaries between scientific and social aspects of medicine were difficult to draw.

In this seminar we will explore ancient Greek and Roman ideas and images of the idealized landscape, reading examples of the pastoral ideal from Greek authors such as Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Theocritus, and Longus and Roman authors such as Vergil, Horace, and Ovid. We will read these works in conversation with the larger tradition of the pastoral and idealized landscape as represented in the landscapes of Roman frescoes, Chinese ink paintings, and French oil paintings, continuing to the modern evolution of the anti-pastoral or post-pastoral positions represented by ecocriticism. Works will be read in translation (although students with appropriate experience in Greek/Latin may elect to read the original Greek and Latin texts for appropriate credit). We will conclude the seminar by reading two works heavily indebted to the pastoral motif of an idealized, but perhaps ultimately lost, Arcadian landscape and way of life: Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Brideshead Revisited (the first half of which is titled “Et in Arcadia Ego”), and an account by the modern shepherd and farmer, James Rebanks, of the realities of agricultural work in today’s England: English Pastoral: An Inheritance.