In this class we will read a broad selection of travel narratives, from Herodotus to Ibn Battuta and from the Jesuit Relations describing New France up to the 20th century writers such as Lawrence Durrell, Robyn Davidson and Rory Stewart. Our focus will be on exploring how travel and travel writing create exotic cultures. The journey also becomes a discovery of self by an encounter with the Other. In the process, entire worlds of wonder open up for the viewer. How material is selected for recording reflects the priorities, anxieties and worldview of the writer, reflecting travel's ability to focus our attention and stimulate thoughtful reflection.

Most modern people first encounter the ancient world, not in the classroom, but in early pleasure reading and other forms of play, whether in myth collections like D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths or fantasies like the Percy Jackson series or video games like Apotheon. This seminar will examine the presence of classical myth and ancient history in young people's culture from the nineteenth century, when classical myth was turned into children's literature by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Kingsley, to the present day, both in traditional literary forms and in newer media such as cartoons, video games, and fan fiction. Topics to be considered include: how stories not originally intended for children have been made suitable for child audiences; the construction of ancient counterparts for modern children; what kinds of children - in terms of class, race, and gender - adult authors envision as the natural audience for classical material and what they hope those children will get out of it; the ways in which young people have claimed that same material and made it their own; and the role of mythical figures in the development of modern identities. Along with the material that we read and discuss together, each student will have the opportunity to present and write about a classically-inspired work for children or young adults that is of particular interest to them.

The neat, comforting narratives that we construct of the histories of ancient Greece and Rome cover up a collection of controversies and debates that continue to rage in contemporary scholarship. Can we use the Homeric epics as sources of early Greek history? Who was responsible for the Peloponnesian War? How can we best explain Rome's acquisition of empire? How new was the political revolution of Augustus? What were the main reasons for the rise of Christianity? In this course, we explore these and other controversies, focusing on both modern scholarship and the ancient sources. All texts will be discussed in translation. No prior knowledge of Ancient History is required, although it would be useful to have taken ANCH 0101 and/or ANCH 0102.

The neat, comforting narratives that we construct of the histories of ancient Greece and Rome cover up a collection of controversies and debates that continue to rage in contemporary scholarship. Can we use the Homeric epics as sources of early Greek history? Who was responsible for the Peloponnesian War? How can we best explain Rome's acquisition of empire? How new was the political revolution of Augustus? What were the main reasons for the rise of Christianity? In this course, we explore these and other controversies, focusing on both modern scholarship and the ancient sources. All texts will be discussed in translation. No prior knowledge of Ancient History is required, although it would be useful to have taken ANCH 0101 and/or ANCH 0102.

What is philosophy? How does it differ from science, religion, literature, and other modes of human discourse? This course traces the origins of philosophy as a discipline in the Western tradition, looking to thinkers of Ancient Greece and Rome. We will examine how natural philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, and Heraclitus distinguished their inquiries from the teachings of poets such as Homer and Hesiod; how ancient atomism had its origins in a response to Parmenides' challenge to the assumption that things change in the world; how Socrates reoriented the focus of philosophy away from the natural world and toward the fundamental ethical question, how shall I live? We will also examine how his pupil, Plato, and subsequently Aristotle, developed elaborate philosophical systems that address the nature of reality, knowledge, and human happiness. Finally, we will examine the ways in which later thinkers such as the Epicureans and Stoics transformed and extended the earlier tradition.

What is philosophy? How does it differ from science, religion, literature, and other modes of human discourse? This course traces the origins of philosophy as a discipline in the Western tradition, looking to thinkers of Ancient Greece and Rome. We will examine how natural philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, and Heraclitus distinguished their inquiries from the teachings of poets such as Homer and Hesiod; how ancient atomism had its origins in a response to Parmenides' challenge to the assumption that things change in the world; how Socrates reoriented the focus of philosophy away from the natural world and toward the fundamental ethical question, how shall I live? We will also examine how his pupil, Plato, and subsequently Aristotle, developed elaborate philosophical systems that address the nature of reality, knowledge, and human happiness. Finally, we will examine the ways in which later thinkers such as the Epicureans and Stoics transformed and extended the earlier tradition.

This class examines our enduring fascination with ruins coupled with our commitments to reconstruction from theoretical, ethical, socio-political and practical perspectives. This includes analyzing international conventions and principles, to the work of heritage agencies and NGOs, to the implications for specific local communities and development trajectories. We will explore global case studies featuring archaeological and monumental sites with an attention to context and communities, as well as the construction of expertise and implications of international intervention. Issues of conservation from the material to the digital will also be examined. Throughout the course we will be asking what a future in ruins holds for a variety of fields and disciplines, as well as those who have most to win or lose in the preservation of the past.

“We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer.” Such is the challenge, as described by Margaret Atwood, that faces a scholar of historically marginalized groups. Most of our knowledge about the lives of ancient Greek and Roman women comes from male sources, from which we imagine a female perspective. But what about when these figures have speaking roles? Are they still voiceless? This course provides an introductory survey of ancient Greek and Roman literary and dramatic texts which feature women as voiced (speaking) subjects. Readings will include excerpts in translation from Homeric epic, tragedy, Greek and Roman comedy, Vergil’s Aeneid, and Ovid. We will also consider the poetry of two ancient women, Sulpicia and Sappho. Can we assume that they represent more authentic experiences? Are these voices just as artificial and literary as their male-authored counterparts? We will also consider modern reimaginings of ancient women’s voices which offer new ways to reclaim, reframe, and problematize the "Classical" canon; these texts include Madeline Miller’s “Circe”, Nina Maclaughlin’s “Wake, Siren”, and the musical “Hadestown”. As we consider the voices of ancient figures, students will have the opportunity to develop their own through various critical speaking assignments. This course is offered as a Communication Within the Curriculum seminar, and no prior knowledge is required.

At its furthest extent during the second century CE, the Roman Empire was truly a "world empire", stretching from northern Britain to North Africa and Egypt, encompassing the whole of Asia Minor, and bordering the Danube in its route from the Black Forest region of Germany to the Black Sea. But in its earliest history it comprised a few small hamlets on a collection of hills adjacent to the Tiber river in central Italy. Over a period of nearly 1500 years, the Roman state transformed from a mythical Kingdom to a Republic dominated by a heterogeneous, competitive aristocracy to an Empire ruled, at least notionally, by one man. It developed complex legal and administrative structures, supported a sophisticated and highly successful military machine, and sustained elaborate systems of economic production and exchange. It was, above all, a society characterized both by a willingness to include newly conquered peoples in the project of empire, and by fundamental, deep-seated practices of social exclusion and domination. This course focuses in particular upon the history of the Roman state between the fifth century BCE and the third century CE, exploring its religious and cultural practices, political, social and economic structures. It also scrutinizes the fundamental tensions and enduring conflicts that characterized this society throughout this 800-year period.

The Greeks enjoy a special place in the construction of western culture and identity, and yet many of us have only the vaguest notion of what their culture was like. A few Greek myths at bedtime when we are kids, maybe a Greek tragedy like Sophokles' Oidipous when we are at school: these are often the only contact we have with the world of the ancient Mediterranean. The story of the Greeks, however, deserves a wider audience, because so much of what we esteem in our own culture derives from them: democracy, epic poetry, lyric poetry, tragedy, history writing, philosophy, aesthetic taste, all of these and many other features of cultural life enter the West from Greece. The oracle of Apollo at Delphi had inscribed over the temple, "Know Thyself." For us, that also means knowing the Greeks. We will cover the period from the Late Bronze Age, c. 1500 BC, down to the time of Alexander the Great, concentrating on the two hundred year interval from 600-400 BC.