Current Graduate Courses & Descriptions

2022-2023 Graduate Courses & Descriptions

Prose Composition

Language-Intensive Courses

Research Seminars

Research Seminars: Course Descriptions

CLA 5021 R. Höschele

This seminar is centered around Greek literary responses to Rome. Reading a selection of texts in both poetry and prose, we will examine how Greek authors represented Roman power, how they positioned themselves vis-à-vis Roman patrons and inscribed themselves in Roman imperial discourses (or not). While it is commonly held that Greek authors did not engage with Latin literature (if they knew Latin at all), we will explore possible allusions to Roman poetry in several Greek texts.

CLA 5018 K. Wilkinson

The Theodosian Code is a compilation of imperial laws from the fourth and early fifth centuries CE. As a basis for Roman law (and then mediaeval European law), it was supplanted by the Justinian Code of the sixth century, but it remains a fundamental body of evidence for the study of the Later Roman Empire. In this seminar, we will investigate the antecedents of the Code; its complex textual history, including the important witness of the Breviary of Alaric, as well as the Novellae and the "Sirmondian Constitutions"; and its value to historians of late antiquity. Other topics will be determined by the interests of the seminar participants but may include such things as the development from classical to late Roman jurisprudence; imperial administration; the legal position of societal groups (e.g., women, slaves, curiales, clergy); treatment of traditional polytheistic religion and/or Jewish religion; the relationship between imperial law and canon law. There are many, many other possible paths.

CLA 5028 K. Blouin CANCELLED

This course offers a multidisciplinary exploration of the economical and ethical entanglements of Classical 'Antiquity' and 'Antiquities'. Through a theoretically-engaged, case-based and experiential approach that will draw from a wide variety of primary evidence, students will be led to reflect on issues such as the geopolitical entailments of public and private collections and displays, provenance and forgeries, the materiality of ancient texts, the ethics of edition and publication, as well as the marketization and appropriation of 'Classics' in a variety of (chronological, national, ideological) contexts. This course will be of interest to students in all streams of the Classics program, as well as to students in other departments (Religion, Anthropology, Arts, Museum Studies, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations).

CLA 5029 B. Chrubasik

Most cities of the ancient Mediterranean may have had aims to control the communities that surrounded it, but for the vast majority, the Aristotelian model of autonomous existence and aspirations to larger control was not a reality. Instead, most communities arranged themselves with powerful—if changing—neighbours. How did these communities exist, thrive and develop within these imperial spheres? Were there systemic differences and developments in the relationships between cities and empires? These are some of the historical questions this seminar aims to address.

The chronological framework is broad—from Achaemenid to Roman Imperial times—and the ancient evidence is largely literary, epigraphic and numismatic.

This topic is by itself of interest. Yet our approach to the questions to the source material at our disposal will be guided by some of the major approaches to the field of history in the 20thand 21st centuries. How does one study imperialism now rather than two or three generations ago? How would empiricists approach our evidence? Which questions can (and cannot) be asked with a Marxist lens? The chronological breadth of the seminar implies a nod to the Annales School, but how does an acknowledgement of such approaches shape our approach to the ancient evidence? These questions also concern historical presentation: are narratives still essential and, if so, how should they be written? Can we de-colonize the histories of the cities of e.g. Ionia, and what would structuralist and poststructuralist accounts look like? Ultimately, living in a world where even the globalized first decade of the 21st century looks like a distant place: how do we do ancient history in 2023?

This seminar is open to any graduates working on the world of the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East. Advanced knowledge of Greek and Latin is desirable but not essential.

CLA 5023 E. Gunderson

Apuleius of Madauros (excerpt from Wikipedia)

Apuleius (/ˌæpjʊˈliːəs/; also called Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis; c. 124 – c. 170[1]) was a Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician. He lived in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, modern-day M'Daourouch, Algeria. He studied Platonism in Athens, travelled to Italy, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the attentions (and fortune) of a wealthy widow. He declaimed and then distributed a witty tour de force in his own defense before the proconsul and a court of magistrates convened in Sabratha, near ancient Tripoli, Libya. This is known as the Apologia.

His most famous work is his bawdy picaresque novel, the Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass. It is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. 

As is clear from the above, both Apuleius and his works embodied a complex collocation of features: questions place, power, genre, gender, ethnicity, erudition, cosmopolitanism, colonialism, philosophy, and mysticism saturate his heterogenous body of work at every turn. 

We will explore the diverse body of texts transmitted under his hame and attempt to come to terms with the challenges that they pose for a reader. The include philosophical works, rhetorical pieces, and a novel. They are normative as well as revolutionary, ectopic as well as centripetal, contemporary as well as backward-looking. 

In addition to attempting to parse this collection of themes in terms of its original hybrid cultural context we will also explore the ways in which these works speak to our own interests in cultural productions within a post-colonial situation. 

CLA 5012 R. Barney

We will investigate a number of competing discourses and debates involving claims to wisdom in the so-called 5th century enlightenment. Themes and topics will include poetic authority and literary interpretation, the attractions and dangers of the new (‘Presocratic’) science, religion and atheism, debates about nature [phusis] and convention [nomos], cultural relativity and moral relativism, and rival methods of agonistic argument and proof. Each week we will focus on close reading of a paradigmatic text as a way into a proto-disciplinary intellectual discourse and a subject of debate: likely candidates include Aristophanes’ Frogs or Clouds, the Derveni Papyrus, the Anonymous Iamblichi, On Ancient Medicine or On the Art, The Contest of Homer and Hesiod, Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen, Antiphon’s Tetralogies, and the discussion of Simonides in Plato’s Protagoras. All of these texts are the subject of lively interpretive contestation; many are anonymous, fragmentary, or deeply enigmatic. We will contextualise them with other relevant 5th century texts, and investigate the resources of multiple interpretive strategies and interdisciplinary approaches for placing them in a rich, coherent picture of 5th century intellectual debate.      

MAC 1000 P. Sapirstein / S. Murray

The study of the ancient Mediterranean world has been both enriched and complicated by the diversity of cultures and states that occupied its shores throughout antiquity, and the vastly different bodies of evidence those cultures and states left behind. This diversity of evidence has led to the development of distinctive standard methodologies operating within sub-disciplines. The aim of this course is to provide students with a critical understanding of what constitutes method within the different domains of Classical archaeology, ancient history, and prehistory, and the challenges and opportunities in working across these methods to produce new frameworks for researching the ancient Mediterranean. Students will examine ways in which historical and archaeological methods might be applied comparatively or diachronically across traditional chronological or geographical boundaries. Themes and topics to be discussed will include demography and settlement patterns, religion and art, technology and economy, and connectivity and networks. Readings will be drawn from several core ‘classic' texts on the ancient Mediterranean and specific case-studies. Students will be evaluated based on in-class presentations, participation in discussion, and a major research paper.