Fall 2013 Course Descriptions
INTRO GREEK CIV
Classics 10A Section 1 (4 units)
GRIFFITH, M
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts and Literature, Historical Studies and Philosophy and Values.
Study of the major developments, achievements, and contradictions in Greek culture from the Bronze Age to the 4th century BCE. Key works of literature, history, and philosophy (read in English translation) will be examined in their political and social context, and in relation both to other ancient Mediterranean cultures and to subsequent developments in Western civilization.
ELEM GREEK ARCH
Classics 17A Section 1 (4 units)
SHELTON, K S
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts and Literature and Historical Studies.
This course is intended as an in-depth introduction to the material culture of the Ancient Greeks. We will examine and discuss the architecture, sculpture, painting, and ceramics of the various periods chronologically from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic period, and will examine how archaeologists and art historians interpret this evidence. One goal of the course is to understand the technical and artistic development and changes in the artifacts and their characteristic styles while gaining deeper insight into the civilization that produced them through an understanding of how the wider social and economic context conditioned and were affected by these accomplishments
Famous monuments and sites (the Shaft Graves of Mycenae, the Panhellenic Sanctuaries of Olympia and Delphi, the Acropolis of Athens) will be examined in detail together with many new discoveries "fresh out of the ground". This material will be presented through illustrated lectures and readings. Grades will be based on three exams and a term project.
FRESHMAN SEMINARS: Homer's Odyssey and the Quest for Home, Fulfillment, Happiness and Meaning
Classics 24 Section 1 (1 units)
BULLOCH, A W
This seminar is a study of the 'Odyssey' in both the cultural and historical context of ancient Greece, and as a mythic language through which to explore issues of identity, gender, sexuality, community, individuality, responsibility, etc. This seminar is part of the Connections@Cal initiative.
GRECO-ROMAN MAGIC
Classics 29 Section 1 (3 units)
MURPHY, T M
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Historical Studies and Philosophy and Values.
This course will focus on ideas about magic in the Greek and Roman worlds from about 750 BCE through 400 CE. Topics will include witches, holy men, love spells, necromancy, spirits, and mystery religions. We will examine how magic was represented in high literature (by authors like Homer, Ovid, Apuleius and Lucian) as well as the more practical evidence of curse tablets and the Greek Magical Papyri.Consideration will be given to analyzing the relationship between magic, religion, and philosophy.
Our goal will be to study the common threads that connect different Greek and Roman magical practices, as well as to understand them in their cultural contexts.
ROOTS WESTERN CIV: The Roots of Western Civilization
Classics R44 Section 1 (5 units)
OLIENSIS and SAILOR
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts & Literature, Historical Studies and Social and Behavioral Sciences as well as Reading and Composition A or B.
In this reading- and writing-intensive class, we will explore a set of literary works from the four traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world-Greek, Jewish, Roman, and Christian-that exerted the strongest influence on that later complex of cultural, intellectual, political, and religious traditions often described by the term "Western civilization." At the same time, we will be using this rich and interesting group of works as material on which to develop and practice higher-level reading and writing skills. Lectures will offer historical context, identify significant recurring themes, and provide examples of ways of making arguments about literature. Sections will provide a forum both for discussion of the readings and for the development of practical strategies for effective and interesting writing. Although there will be a final exam and various in-section written exercises, the heart of your graded written work will be a series of drafts and revisions of short, sharp essays.
ANCIENT RELIGION
Classics 121 Section 1 (4 units)
BULLOCH, A W
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Historical Studies, Philosophy & Values and Social & Behavioral Sciences.
A study of the religious practices, beliefs and mentality of the Ancient Greeks in their full socio-cultural context in the period covering c. 1500 BC to c. 400 AD., with particular emphasis on public and private cult, ritual and festival and their function in ancient Greece. The course will be based on the rich evidence provided by both primary texts (literary and documentary), and material remains (sanctuaries, monuments, and works of art including sculpture, mosaics, painting and vase-painting), and will explore the relationship between Greek myth and religion, and the way in which Greek religion addressed contemporary notions of cosmogony, history, community, identity, science and creativity, sexuality, spirituality, and the complex roles and relationships of male and female in Greek society.
No previous knowledge or experience of the ancient Greek world will be expected or required and we welcome students of all levels and from all backgrounds.
TOPICS: GREEK AND ROMAN HONORIFIC PORTRAITS
Classics 130 Section 1 (4 units)
HALLETT, C H
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Historical Studies, Philosophy & Values and Social & Behavioral Sciences.
Important individuals in Greek and Roman society were commemorated both in honorific portraits-bronze and marble statues set up in public places-and in biographies written to record for posterity their lives and achievements. In this class we will be reading a selection of Greek and Latin biographical texts (in translation) and comparing them with statuary monuments that represent the same individuals. We will be seeking to elicit the points of contact between the two commemorative traditions, visual and literary, and to understand the sometimes similar functions they serve. But we will also be attempting to bring out the differences in the way that biographical texts and portrait images operate, and the consequences that this has for the way we, as historians, must approach them. Ancient authors to be sampled in this course: Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Diogenes Laertius, Augustus, Suetonius, the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, the Panegyrici Latini.
GENDER ANC WORLD
Classics 161 Section 1 (4 units)
KURKE, L V
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts and Literature, Historical Studies and Philosophy and Values.
This course will study sexuality and gender in two very different historical periods--ancient Greece and 19th-century Europe. Sexuality will be defined as including sexual acts (e.g. sodomy, pederasty, masturbation); sexual identities (e.g. erastes and eromenos); and sexual systems (e.g. kinship structures, subcultures, political hierarchies). Readings and lectures will focus on situating queer sexualities relative to dominant organizations of sex and gender. Topics will include Greek democracy and male homosexuality; the biology of sexual difference; the politics of sodomy; "romantic" friendship between women and men; and the emergence of strictly defined homosexual and heterosexual identities. We will read literary texts along with historical documents and critical essays to constitute a comparative analysis of ancient Greek and 19th-century European systems of gender and sexuality.
Authors to be read include Hesiod, Sappho, Aeschylus, Plato, Wilde, Freud, and Foucault.
SURVEY GREEK LIT
Classics 201A Section 1 (4 units)
KURKE, L V
This course will serve as a rapid introduction to the main texts and problematics of archaic Greek poetry (Homer, Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, iambic, elegy, melic), as well as a briefer foray into classical Greek tragedy and history.
APPROACHES CL LIT
Classics 203 Section 1 (4 units)
OLIENSIS, E S
GREEK DRAMA: Euripides
Classics 214 Section 1 (4 units)
MASTRONARDE, D J
The plays we will concentrate on in this seminar are Hippolytus and Alcestis, and, apart from other topics of the usual sort (rhetoric and agon, chorus, role of the gods, gender issues, etc.) we will be doing a group project examining the indirect testimony for the two plays, imagining what their "fragments" would have looked like if the full plays had not been transmitted in the medieval manuscripts and what could have been inferred about their contents. In connection with Hippolytus we will also be reading Seneca's Phaedra and Racine's Phedre.
CLASSICS TOPICS: Missing Cosmogonies? Thinking the world / translating the gods in Roman culture
Classics 239 Section 1 (4 units)
BETTINI, M
**Please note this course has a reduced schedule**
These are the meeting dates:
September 11, 18, 25
October 2, 9, 16, 23, 30
Surveying the most ancient Roman sources - or at any rate the texts describing the most ancient period of Rome - scarcely any reference at all can be found to cosmogonies, theogonies, or anthropogonies. The Etruscans, by contrast, have left at least one trace of a cosmogony, not to speak of the well known Mesopotamic and Hebrew narratives, of the Hesiodic Theogony or of the other 'indo-european' cosmological traditions. It does not mean that the Romans, in the course of their history, did not at some time compose works dealing with the origin of the cosmos and of man: they did, of course - but only after their city had already been in existence for centuries and its citizens had acquired a great empire. Only at this point did Lucretius write the fifth book of De rerum natura, Vergil the sixth Eclogue, and Ovid the first book of his Metamorphoses. Why the Romans waited so long to compose works of this kind? Why did they not do so earlier? This is the question we will try to answer - in the conviction that in order to understand a culture, sometimes it is as useful to reflect on what is absent from that culture as to study what is actually present in it.
By exploring the specific cultural frames according to which the Romans thought their relations with the world and the gods, we will have the opportunity of better understanding some very specific features of their religious system: such as the possibility of translating, borrowing and 'creolizing' the gods of other cultures.
CLASSICS TOPICS
Classics 239 Section 2 (4 units)
MURPHY, T M
The focus of this seminar will be the nature and function of geographic texts in the early Roman empire. We will focus on Pomponius Mela (Chorographia) and Pliny the Elder (Natural History 3-6), drawing also on Strabo and non-literary evidence for comparative material.
Topics to be addressed include:
-how geographic information was collected, circulated, displayed and used in the Principate;
-the management of symbolic space (the City; provinces; the edges of the world).
-the relationship of geographic texts to the Roman triumph; and the role of geographic excurses in poetry and historiography.
ADV GREEK COMP
Classics 250 Section 1 (4 units)
MASTRONARDE, D J
The purpose of this course is to survey a variety of styles in Greek prose (with most attention paid to Attic oratory and to Plato) and to develop the students' skill in producing morphologically and syntactically accurate Greek prose with some degree of stylistic sensitivity. The grade will be based mainly on submission of about 9-11 compositions; the 7-9 best grades will count toward the final grade. There will also be reading assignments in Greek prose, sight reading in class, minor stylistic exercises, and some review of syntax. In addition to attendance at class, students may meet individually with the instructor for further guidance.
SEMINAR CLASS ARCH: Etruscan Cities
Classics 270 Section 1 (2 units)
PENA and PIERACCINI
This course will provide graduate students in classical archaeology and related fields with an in-depth introduction to the archaeology of the major urban centers of the Etruscan world. These centers, which played a determining role in the emergence of social, political, and economic complexity in the Italian peninsula, have been the focus of a very substantial amount of field research over the past 15-20 years, and particular attention will be accorded to the results of this more recent work. Each of the seminar participants will assume responsibility for one of the major Etruscan cities, presenting the evidence pertaining to this center to the seminar in a series of four 30-minute reports (background, formative period, Classical/Hellenistic period, city and territory). Each participant enrolled for the full four units will also produce a seminar paper that is based on material from or relating to his/her center, presenting a 30-minute report on this work. Since the bulk of the relevant literature is in Italian, a reading ability in Italian is essential to participation in the seminar.
TEACHING METHODS
Classics 375 Section 1 (3 units)
MCCARTHY, K
Seminar in problems of teaching. Required for all new graduate student instructors.
ELEMENTARY GREEK
Greek 1 Section 2 (4 units)
WALIN, D C
Beginners' course.
ELEMENTARY GREEK
Greek 1 Section 1 (4 units)
PAPAZARKADAS, N
Beginners' course.
INTERMED GREEK COMP
Greek 40 Section 1 (4 units)
WALIN, D C
Development of skills in writing Attic prose and sight reading; grammar review.
ATTIC PROSE
Greek 100 Section 1 (4 units)
CRANE, D
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts & Literature and Philosophy & Values
In this course we will read two texts in their entirety and in the original Ancient Greek (NOT in translation!): first, Lysias' courtroom speech "On the murder of Eratosthenes," followed by Plato's dialogue "Crito." As time permits, we will also practise reading Greek at sight. While the course is primarily directed towards improving your knowledge of Greek, it will include consideration of our texts as intellectual and artistic achievements, and for the light they shed on Athenian culture.
DRAMA
Greek 102 Section 1 (4 units)
GRIFFITH, M
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts & Literature and Historical Studies
ATTIC ORATORY: Demosthenes
Greek 122 Section 1 (4 units)
PAPAZARKADAS, N
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts & Literature and Historical Studies
In this course we will be reading Demosthenes' On the Crown using the 'green-and-yellow' Cambridge commentary by H. Yunis. Already in antiquity Demosthenes was considered the greatest of the 10 canonical Attic orators, and On the Crown his greatest achievement. The speech was delivered in the context of a fierce political battle between Demosthenes and his arch-rival Aeschines, and gave Demosthenes the opportunity to present a detailed account of his political career, which was characterized by a stubborn, albeit unsuccessful, anti-Macedonian policy. Close reading of the speech in the original along with a reading of Aeschines' companion-piece Against Ctesiphon (in translation) will allow students to delve into the intricacies of a most exciting historical period that saw the rise of Macedon under Philip II, the epoch-making battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE), the destruction of Thebes, and, eventually, the decline of Athens itself. The course will also allow students to improve their Greek while learning to appreciate the widely celebrated rhetorical virtues of On the Crown.
ELEMENTARY LATIN
Latin 1 Section 2 (4 units)
DRISCOLL, E W
Beginners' course.
ELEMENTARY LATIN: Elementary Latin
Latin 1 Section 1 (4 units)
BRAVO, C
Beginners' course.
ELEMENTARY LATIN
Latin 1 Section 4 (4 units)
ADAMS, C C
Beginners' course.
ELEMENTARY LATIN
Latin 1 Section 3 (4 units)
MCCLAY, M
Beginners' course.
ELEMENTARY LATIN
Latin 2 Section 1 (4 units)
DIXON, S E
Beginners' course.
INTENS ELEM LATIN
Latin 10 Section 1 (8 units)
STREET, J M
Beginner's Course (intensive); equivalent to Latin 1-2
REPUBLICAN PROSE
Latin 100 Section 1 (4 units)
WALIN, D C
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts & Literature and Historical Studies
Selected readings in Caesar, Sallust, and Cicero; some review of grammar.
VERGIL
Latin 101 Section 1 (4 units)
BULLOCH, A W
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts & Literature
Selected readings from Vergil.
LAT PROSE TO AD 14: Cicero
Latin 120 Section 1 (4 units)
SAILOR, D
Fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts & Literature and Historical Studies
In this class we'll read in Latin a speech, some philosophical writing, and some letters by M. Tullius Cicero. At the undergraduate level, you often encounter him only at the intermediate stage, mainly as an opportunity to improve your Latin; my intention in this senior-level course is that we should come to some more substantive and satisfying critical understanding of the written work of Cicero, the crucial intellectual figure of the late Republic.
