Many great writers have reused the literature of the past in order to create new works of art. In order to understand the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Racine, Montaigne, Sartre, and Shaw, among others, we need to know how they refashioned and transformed the works of classical authors, such as Aeschylus Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, and […]
ANCILLARY COURSE. A study of early Mesopotamian, Greek, Jewish and Christian literature (1) to understand its original meanings and (2) to explore its relevance to our search for personal ethical norms, images of female and male, models of the just society and conceptions of transcendent reality. The course aims to teach students methods of literary […]
An examination of Egypt and Egyptians in the imagination and history of the cultures of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean.
The mythical narratives of the ancient Greeks and the Romans constitute a continuous tradition that extends from before the reach of history to the present day. Myths survive in literary texts and visual art because their narratives have continued proved compelling and fascinating in different languages, historical eras, and social contexts (the myths of Odysseus, […]
Ancient Roman society is one of the most strangely familiar of all past societies. It is in many ways recognizable, since it helped form the modern societies of western Europe; yet it also had features that are bizarre and shocking to modern sensibilities. In this course, we take a number of case studies from this […]
This Foundations course offers a serious, focused, and critical examination of the ancient Greeks and Romans through the lens of important primary texts from Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Virgil, all considered in translation from ancient Greek and Latin. In the final part of the course, we consider the meaning and significance of our study the […]
This course is designed to teach students how to build their vocabulary systematically through the study of Latin and Greek elements in essential English words in a variety of fields and to learn how to use this knowledge in a practical way in their academic courses and later for the advancement of their chosen careers. […]
This course is designed for those who have little or no training in Latin. No knowledge of the language is assumed. The course focuses on the acquisition of reading skills and the fundamentals of the Latin language: vocabulary, morphology (forms), and syntax. Students will also gain practice in translation, listening, pronouncing, and some composition; an […]
This course is designed for those who have little or no training in Ancient Greek, which is essentially the Attic dialect spoken and written by the Athenians of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. No knowledge of the language is assumed. The course uses the pronunciation of Ancient Greek that was established by Erasmus in […]