2025-2026 Graduate Courses & Descriptions

Prose Composition

Language-Intensive Courses

Research Seminars

Prose Composition Course Descriptions

GRK1000H Advanced Studies in Greek Language - D. Kenny

A course designed to enhance language skills. Prose composition, sight translation, stylistic analysis of classical Greek prose. 

Students should enhance their skills in reading Greek prose in this course. Specifically, at the end of the course they should: 

• have increased confidence and ability in reading classical Greek prose at sight 
• be able to translate passages of English prose into classical Greek prose 
• have improved their appreciation of classical Greek prose style 

Graduate students entering the program will already have the knowledge they need for accomplishing these objectives; this course will focus on the application of that knowledge and the development of some appropriate skills. 

LAT1000H Advanced Studies in Latin Language - J. Welsh

Detailed study of classical Latin prose. Students will consolidate their knowledge of advanced Latin grammar and be introduced to a variety of different prose styles. Particular attention will be paid to prose composition and to stylistic analysis of classical Latin prose.

Language Instensive Course Descriptions

GRK1800 Democracy in Crisis - V. Wohl

Around the world (and disturbingly close to home) democracy is in crisis. Are there lessons to be learned about this current crisis from the history of ancient democracy? In this class, we will read the literature of democratic Athens and discuss the promise and limitations of democracy as a political system, as well as the threats (internal and external) it may face. Our readings will be drawn almost exclusively from reading list texts, and will cover a broad range of genres, including tragedy, comedy, historiography, oratory, and political theory. The primary objective of the course is to support students in enhancing their Greek reading skills and familiarizing themselves with the central texts of classical Greece and the skills of classics scholarship. Students who want more information or a preliminary preview of the readings are encouraged to email me.

LAT1800 Special Topics in Latin Literature: Readings in Latin Epic - M. Dewar

The aims of this course are, first and foremost, to help students improve their general fluency in reading Latin epic poetry and, secondly, to help them prepare for the Qualifying Examinations. We shall begin with Catullus’ neoteric epyllion, Carmen 64. Students will be consulted in January to determine which other texts on the Qualifying Examinations Reading Lists they prefer to study in class.

Time in class will be spent on a range of differing activities. Practice in translating portions of the set texts into English will feature prominently, as preparation for the Qualifying Examinations, and discussion of stylistic, linguistic, literary-historical, and literary-critical considerations will also be encouraged.

Research Seminars Course Descriptions

CLA5022H Early Greek Political Thought - R. Barney.

Before Plato and Aristotle, a number of early Greek intellectuals articulated distinctive political ideas -- even 'theories of politics'. Their surviving texts debate central questions about the nature of law and the best constitution; how to resolve conflicts caused by greed, violence, faction, and the corruptions of power; and the role of political wisdom. At the centre of all is the familiar and still-urgent question of justice [dikê]: what it is, where it comes from, what authority it has, and whether and how it can be attained in the world as we know it. But if the problems are still recognisable, the way of thinking here is unfamiliar and difficult. This is partly because divine forces -- or their absence -- are fundamental, but even more because the ideas here are in most cases worked out through some genre other than the philosophical treatise: epic poetry, lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, 'constitution', rhetorical address, or empirical reportage. And this makes for deep differences from the theorizing which comes after. While very different from each other, these forms afford various opportunities for thinking about politics in an essentially 'open' way: for presenting conflicting standpoints, self-undermining narratives, unresolved ambiguities, and hints of the unthinkable. And the proto-philosophical prose works of the Presocratics and sophists, whether by being fragmentary or through deliberate authorial strategy, are often interpretively open in the same way. So in trying to figure out what the earliest Greek political thinkers have to say about politics we will be grappling just as much with how they are saying it, and how the how shapes the what. That is, we will be studying the differences which form makes to content in political thought.

Each week will be organized around a core text, to be discussed closely, and a counter-text which illuminates or problematizes it. Core/counter texts will (likely) include Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, the Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus' Eumenides, the fragments of Heraclitus, Solon, Antiphon, and Protagoras, the Anonymous Iamblichi and Dissoi Logoi, Aristophanes' Wealth, Sophocles' Antigone, and Euripides' Andromachê. We will also glance at some significant moments in modern reception, and useful developments in contemporary scholarship. The course is intended to be accessible to students from a wide variety of perspectives, ranging from those whose primary interests are literary to specialists in political philosophy.

Evaluation: Presentation (10%), Presentation response (5%), Other Participation (5%), Micro-Paper (20%), Research Paper (60%).

CLA5028H Theology in first-century Rome: Cicero and the intellectual history of the Late Republic - A. Bendlin

As one consequence of the misguided modern understanding of Roman Republican religion as mere ritual practice, Roman reflections about the divine have received little attention from scholars. If the “theological efforts of the Roman upper classes” (A. Momigliano) are scrutinized at all, they are often read as a Roman response to Hellenic cultural influences. Roman theological thinking, however, happened not only by way of appropriation of preexisting modes of thinking about religion but also in synchrony with the imposition of Rome’s Republican Empire on her Mediterranean subjects.

In this seminar, we discuss some of the most prominent instances of Roman theological thinking in poetry, drama, philosophy, Roman ethnographic, juristic and “antiquarian” literature. We begin in the second century, with Roman drama, which re-conceptualizes the gods for the Roman stage, and with Ennius’s “translation” of Euhemerus of Messene’s Sacred History, which investigates (problematizes?) the deification of individuals––an increasingly attractive proposition for the Roman political elite. The seminar’s main focus is on the 50s and 40s, however, an incredibly fertile period of literary production as far as the domain of religion and theological speculation are concerned––and at the same time a period of political conflict, civil war and authoritarian rule. Throughout the seminar, Cicero is a prominent interlocutor; his On Laws, On the Nature of the Gods, On Divination and On Fate are discussed in detail. One of our aims, however, is to introduce other authors to this conversation, for instance Lucretius, as well as the many contemporaries whose writings survive only in fragments (such as Varro’s Divine Antiquities). Another aim is to understand holistically the systematizing theological efforts of the last generation of the Republic. Why did these efforts happen then? What motivated them? What were their intended aims and audiences?

Methods of Evaluation: Students will contribute to in-class discussion, give an in-class presentation on an author or topic pertinent to the seminar, and write a final paper.

CLA5024H Roman Work - S. Bernard

Most of us spend about half or more of our waking lives working on something. Work and labor define us, not only providing for our basic survival through production, but in many ways shaping our standing and status in society, and informing our identities. The argument of this seminar is that the same was true of the Roman world, that labor was a primary structuring factor of Roman society. Not only that, but labor was historically contingent upon Empire, shaped by the processes of imperial society. The structures of Roman work were therefore both important and particular to their time, two aspects which draw our attention as historians. We hope in this course to trace what made Roman work different and explore the ways in which work and labor can help inform Roman social and economic history.

CLA5023 The Rhetoric of Empire - E. Gunderson

Roman imperialism unfolded over several centuries. It was a basic, albeit complex, element of life in the ancient Mediterranean. It affected, directly or indirectly, just about everyone of every gender, class, and ethnicity, and often differentially so. Accordingly the question is both too important to ignore but also too large to admit of any comprehensive summary.

We will attempt to explore a specific facet of imperial life. One could call it the putting into discourse of the empire. Narrowly, this is just a matter of listening to what people said about the life in an imperial context. But, in practice, what is said is confusing: it is incomplete, misleading, full of exaggerations, marked by omissions, … Little is ever put in the terms one might most expect. Some people are obviously being coy, but when piercing the veil of so-called veiled speech do we really see “behind it all” quite what one expected? Nor, for that matter, did one speak about the here and now empire in the terms that preceding generations had used to speak of empires. So one cannot just say that we are today making anachronistic demands of yesterday. Something complex was afoot, and it cannot be reduced to a matter of rhetoric vs reality or any such simple schema.

We will survey a variety of authors and genres including orations, essays, political tracts, letters, biographies. Will use these reading to assemble an archive of various episodes where the question of the subject and power were articulated. And we will ponder the contents of this archive as we seek to generate our own account of the structuring fantasies of political subjectivity in an imperial world.

Comparative literature students are encouraged to bring in other episodes from other places and times. The current political moment generates them almost daily.

Methods of Evaluation: Students will give in class presentations and write a final paper.

(This seminar is cross-listed as JCO5121H1F.)

CLA5018H Roman Seas - C. Atkins

Description TBD.

CLA5025H Early Greek Society - S. Murray

This seminar focuses on early Greece, defined here as the period between the demise of Bronze Age Aegean palatial states and the beginning of the Archaic period, ca. 1200–700 BCE. Early Greece has traditionally been considered of interest primarily because of its rhetorical positioning as a period when the social relationships and structures that would shape the historical Greek world were developing. Departing from that tradition, this seminar approaches the increasingly rich body of available evidence from this era as compelling on its own merits, a basis for reconstructing five-hundred years of dynamic social, political, and economic history. Emphasis is on historiographical review of extant scholarship framing the period as a ‘transition’, independent examination of material and textual evidence, and generative discussions aimed at developing research pathways that might yield novel insights and models. A larger vector of critique concerns the force of overarching master ‘rise-and-fall’ narratives that frame the structure of Greco-Roman history, and consideration of whether such narratives retain analytical utility in the context of contemporary scholarly discourse. Coursework will involve extensive study of archaeological evidence, while readings will draw from ancient Greek textual sources, particularly poetry by Homer and Hesiod, which are frequently referenced in discussions about early Greece.

CLA5004H Palladas - K. Wilkinson

Description TBD.

MACS1000Y MACS Core Course - S. Bernard

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.