Schedule - CLAS 141 - F20

This schedule links to the readings and assignments that you will have throughout the semester.

Week 1: 9/2 - 9/4 | Week 2: 9/7 - 9/11 | Week 3: 9/14 - 9/18 | Week 4: 9/21 - 9/25 | Week 5: 9/28 - 10/2 | Week 6: 10/5 - 10/9 | Week 7: 10/12 - 10/16 | Week 8: 10/19 - 10/23 | Week 9: 10/26 - 10/30 | Week 10: 11/2 - 11/6 | Week 11: 11/9 - 11/13 | Week 12: 11/16 - 11/20 | Week 13: 11/30 - 12/4 | Week 14: 12/7 - 12/9 |

Week 1

Wednesday, September 2

Friday, September 4 (slides; video)

  • Ancient Greece in the 21st century: A Culture War
  • Homework (due before class): Read Rebecca Futo Kennedy’s lecture on the intersection of the idea of ancient Greece and modern politics. Pick a passage from her lecture and reflect on it in your commonplace book. Back to top.

Week 2

Monday, September 7 (slides; video)

  • The When and Where of Ancient Greece
  • Homework (due before class): Read Rebecca Futo Kennedy’s lecture on what it meant to be “Greek.” Pick a passage or piece of evidence from her lecture that stands out to you and jot down the questions that it raises for you in your commonplace book.

Wednesday, September 9 (slides; video)

  • Ancient Greece in Color
  • Homework (due before class): Read Margaret Talbot’s New Yorker article and Sarah Bond’s thoughtpiece on polychromy and color in ancient statues. Select a passage from one of these two articles and reflect on it in your commonplace book.

Friday, September 11 (slides; video)

  • The Problem of Ancient Evidence, Part 1
  • Homework (due before class): Submit Greek Misconceptions Assignment on Google forms. Read the following compilation of sources on the poet, Telesilla. Instead of writing a standard entry in your commonplace book, jot down three conflicting “facts” that you found in your reading.

Back to top.

Week 3

Monday, September 14 (slides; video)

  • The Problem of Ancient Evidence, Part 2
  • Homework (due before class): Read the accounts of Thucydides and Aristotle about the murder of Hipparchus. Instead of writing a standard entry in your commonplace book, jot down three conflicting “facts” that you found in your reading and what you think might explain these different interpretations.

Wednesday, September 16 (slides; video)

  • Primary Source Analysis Release and Discussion
  • Homework (due before class): Instead of writing a standard entry in your commonplace book, reflect on what you have learned from the primary source analysis that we have done in the last two class periods and outline briefly a process for your own primary source analysis.

Friday, September 18 (slides; video)

  • The Fundamental Divisions of Greek Society
  • Homework (due before class): Read the Gortyn code carefully. In your commonplace book, select a passage that stood out to you and reflect on what it tells you about the culture and society of Gortyn.

Back to top.

Week 4

Monday, September 21 (slides; video)

  • Freedom and Slavery in the Greek World
  • Homework (due before class): Read the passage from Aristotle on slavery. Select a passage from Aristotle and reflect on what it tells us about the basis of slavery in the ancient world in your commonplace book.

Wednesday, September 23 (slides; video)

  • Slavery and The Household
  • Homework (due before class): No homework - spend the extra time working on your Ancient Source Analysis (.doc file here; .pdf file here).

Friday, September 25 (slides; video)

Back to top.

Week 5

Monday, September 28 (slides; video)

  • Slavery and the Greek State
  • Homework (due before class): Read about the employment of enslaved people for a variety of state jobs (§158-163) and in the mines (§87). Select a passage from this document that you found meaningful and reflect on it on your commonplace book.

Wednesday, September 30

Friday, October 2 (slides; video)

  • Resistance and Freedom
  • Homework (due before class): Read through the following selection on the topics of slave resistance (§211, 214, 217, 222-225) and manumission (§22-27) and select one passage from these documents and reflect on what this tells us about the enslaver-enslaved relationship in your commonplace book.

Back to top.

Week 6

Monday, October 5 (slides; video)

  • Between Freedom and Slavery, part 1
  • Homework (due before class): Read Luke Madson’s article on Spartan helots and treatment of Black people in America. Pick an ancient passage that stands out to you from Madson’s article and jot down your thoughts about whether Helots were slaves or not.

Wednesday, October 7 (slides; video)

  • Between Freedom and Slavery, part 2
  • Homework (due before class): Read Hans van Wees’ article (§1-3) on various groups of non-free and non-enslaved people. Pick one passage from the article and reflect the blurring of the line between free and not free tells us about Greek society.

Friday, October 9

  • NO CLASS

Back to top.

Week 7

Monday, October 12 (slides; video)

  • Perceptions of Women in Ancient Greece
  • Homework (due before class): Read Hesiod’s story of Pandora and Semonides’ poem on the nature of women. Select a few lines that stand out to you from these two poems and jot down in commonplace book what these lines tell you about how women were perceived in Greek culture.

Wednesday, October 14 (slides; video)

  • Women at Home
  • Homework (due before class): Carefully read through the passage from Xenophon about what is expected from a wife. In your commonplace book, select one passage and analyze the characteristics that make a good wife in the speaker’s eyes and compare this to what we read in Hesiod and Semonides.

Friday, October 16 (slides; video)

  • Women at Work
  • Homework (due before class): Read the following passages about female wet nurses, midwifery, prostitutes, philosophers, and musicians. Pick one selection from these passages and reflect in your commonplace book about the cultural values that women were expected to display in the workplace, comparing it to other documents that we have read.

Back to top.

Week 8

Monday, October 19 (slides; video)

  • Women and Religion
  • Homework (due before class): Read Connolly’s chapter on priestesses in the Greek world. In your commonplace book, select one key passage from the reading and reflect on what it tells us about the types of power that women could hold in ancient Greece.

Wednesday, October 21 (slides; video)

  • Women in Power
  • Non-Elite History Assignment Released
  • Homework (due before class): Read selections from Herodotus on Artemisia and Plutarch on Aspasia. In your commonplace book, select one passage to analyze and reflect on the characteristics make them so powerful.

Friday, October 23 (slides; video)

  • Women in Their Own Words
  • Homework (due before class): Read Sappho 1, 4, 8 and selected epigrams from female writers. In your commonplace book, select one passage from the readings and reflect on how the concerns and perspectives presented by women themselves is similar and different from what we have seen so in the course so far.

Back to top.

Week 9

Monday, October 26 (slides; video)

  • Immigrants in Greek society (metics)
  • Homework (due before class): Read this short passage from Xenophon’s Poroi. In your commonplace book, use Xenophon’s text to figure out what restriction that the Athenians placed on their immigrants.

Wednesday, October 28 (slides; video)

Friday, October 30 (slides; video)

  • The Spartan mirage
  • Homework (due before class): Read Sarah Bond’s article and Ishaan Tharoor’s piece on the modern obsession with Sparta. In your commonplace book, select a passage that stood to you and reflect on what this tells us about how we think about Sparta in modern society.

Back to top.

Week 10

Monday, November 2 (slides; video)

  • The Spartan mirage: Ancient evidence and its problems
  • Homework (due before class): Read the opening six chapters of Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus. Select one passage from Plutarch’s biography from your commonplace book that you believe reflects how accurate the details of this biography are.

Wednesday, November 4 (slides; video)

  • Spartan origins: Between Myth and Legend
  • Homework (due before class): Read Herodotus’ account of the so-called Dorian invasion and Carol Thomas’ article on the archaeological evidence for it. Select one passage from ones of the reading and reflect on why the literary sources might be at variance with archaeological evidence.

Friday, November 6

  • The Spartan Cauldron: The 7th century BCE
  • Homework (due before class): Read the selections from the early Spartan poets, Tyrtaeus and Alcman. Select one passage from each of the poets to put in your commonplace book and reflect on the different perspective they give us about seventh century Sparta.

Week 11

Monday, November 9 (slides; video)

  • Spartan education
  • Homework (due before class): Read the opening four chapters from the Constitution of the Spartans about Spartan educational practice. Select one passage from the work and reflect on what this tells us about what was believed to be unique about Sparta in the ancient world and whether you find this to be believable or not given what we have learned about in class in your commonplace book.

Wednesday, November 11 (slides; video)

  • Sparta customs
  • Homework (due before class): Read the chapter 5 to 8 from the Constitution of the Spartans about Spartan customs. Select one passage from the work and think about the values, both good and bad, that these customs seem to reflect in your commonplace book.

Friday, November 13 (slides; video)

  • Spartan women
  • Homework (due before class): Read through the following selections from the Life of Lycurgus and the alleged sayings of Spartan women recorded by Sparta. Select one passage from these works and reflect on what you believe this tells us about Spartan women and how trustworthy the evidence is.

Week 12

Monday, November 16

  • Sparta’s rise to power (part 1)
  • Homework (due before class): Read Herodotus’ account (7.145-160) on the Greek preparations for the Persian War. Select one passage from the reading and reflect on what it tells us about how the Spartans are perceived by the other Greeks during the fifth century BCE in your commonplace book.

Wednesday, November 18

  • Sparta’s rise to power (part 2)
  • Homework (due before class): Read Thucydides’ account of the breakdown on the eve of the Peloponnesian war. Select one passage from this reading and reflect on how the Spartans are seen by their fellow Greeks in your commonplace book. In your analysis, be sure to compare it to the image of Sparta we saw in Herodotus.

Friday, November 20

  • Sparta’s internal struggles
  • Homework (due before class): Read through the following passages from Thucydides and Xenophon about internal problems at Sparta. Select one passage from these works and reflect on how it reveals the problems that were lurking in Spartan society as its imperial reach grew in your commonplace book.

Week 13

Monday, November 30

  • The Fall of Sparta
  • Homework (due before class): If you chose to do the creative project, send it to me by email by 2 PM!

Wednesday, December 2

  • CEF day
  • Homework (due before class): None!

Friday, December 4

  • Modern politics and Greek history
  • Homework (due before class): Read Denise McCoskey’s article about the Black Athena controversy in the early 1990s. In your commonplace book, select a passage that stood out to you and use it to reflect more broadly on the connection between ancient history and modern politics, drawing on other examples from class.

Week 14

Monday, December 7

  • 300(!!!)
  • Homework (due before class): Watch 300. In your commonplace book, reflect on three scenes from the movie that surprised you in light what we have learned in class and note how you might write the scenes differently if you directed it.

Wednesday, December 9

  • Wrap-up!
  • Homework (due before class): If you are doing the podcast project, come in ready to share the three passages that you are taking from your commonplace book as inspiration for your podcast.