Topics

The advanced study of a specific topic in Mediterranean civilizations or literature. Recent courses have treated such topics as Plato on Love and Pleasure, Gender in the Greek and Roman World, Damnation and Salvation, Socrates--The Mind and the Myth, Great Archaeological Discoveries, Greek and Roman Law, and Ancient History and Film. May be repeated for credit with topic changes. Information on upcoming topics courses can be found on the departmental Web page.

Current Semester Information

300A: Tps:Airs, Waters, Places

Tps:Airs, Waters, Places: Classics and the Environment

The course title, "Airs Waters Places: Classics and the Environment," repurposes the title of a Hippocratic treatise on the influence of place upon human health. In line with the Hippocratic investigation into the relationship between environment and human health, this course explores how ancient Greek and Roman thinkers and poets conceive of the environment and its role in shaping human culture and how the environment, in turn, informs the ideas and art of ancient Greek and Roman writers. The course begins with an overview of the environmental history of ancient Greece and Rome, then moves through a series of topics--cosmos (ecology), wilderness, farming, and pastoral--that progresses both from macro to micro perspectives of the environment and through time from ancient Greece, to ancient Rome, to modern receptions of ancient environmental literature. The course will be highly interdisciplinary, integrating consideration of philosophical texts, literary texts, material culture, economics, and a subfield of Classical Studies called Classical Reception, which investigates how, and why, ancient Greek and Roman literature and art has influenced the history of literature, art, and ideas since antiquity.