Classical Studies (Spring 2025)
CLSS 1009: Classical Washington DC
Catherine Keesling – Th 9:30-12:00
This course will introduce students to the Greek and Roman precedents behind the institutions, architecture, monuments, and symbols of the nation’s capital city, as well as the debates and controversies they inspire. Topics to be examined include: Roman models for the political institutions of the American republic as well as for slavery; L’Enfant’s plan for Washington DC and its approach to public space; the origins of war memorials and public portrait statues; and Greek and Roman precedents for today’s ‘monument wars’ over issues such as the lack of diversity in public monuments. Assignments will include short papers and a final project. Classroom work will be supplemented by visits to buildings and museum collections in DC.
Section information text:
This course is part of the Capitol Applied Learning Labs and will take place at the Capitol Campus located at 500 1st NW. CALL students receive priority registration. If you are not a CALL student, and you want to take this course you may join the waitlist at https://forms.gle/rqjZVe45Wi6xRNL87. If you’re a CALL student, you can enroll yourself in this course. For more information, visit http://thecall.georgetown.edu or contact thecall@georgetown.edu.
CLSS 1020: Intro Roman Art and Archaeology
Catherine Keesling – WF 9:30-10:45
This course examines ancient Roman innovations in architecture, engineering, city planning, and the visual arts. Lectures trace the development and transformation of Roman material culture from the Iron-Age origins of the city of Rome to the reign of Constantine the Great in the 4th century AD. Students will learn to identify artifacts, monuments, and sites from across the Empire and to understand their cultural, political, and social significance. Highlights include: the Colosseum; aqueducts; marble sarcophagi; the Pantheon; portraits that appear true to life; the Library of Celsus at Ephesus; and the archaeological wonders of Pompeii and Herculaneum. We will discuss the theory and methods of classical archaeology and explore new directions in the interpretation of the ancient Roman past through its material remains. (X-listed with Art History)
CLSS 1041: Roman History: Empire
Josiah Osgood – MW 3:30-4:45
For centuries the Roman empire allowed millions of people, from Scotland to the Middle East, to live in peace and prosper. The empire also enslaved millions. In this class we explore how, looking at the figure of the emperor and the imperial court; war and diplomacy; the everyday lives of rich and poor; mass entertainments in the city of Rome and the provinces; law, individual rights, and slavery; emperor-worship, the growth of Christianity and stories of the martyrs. Evidence examined includes classics of ancient historical writing such as Suetonius’ lives of the emperors as well as original documents and the material remains of cities, country estates, and army forts. Some attention is also paid to the legacy of Rome, from the empires of Charlemagne through to those of Spain and Great Britain.
CLSS 1050: Intro to Greek Literature
Charles McNelis – TTh 9:30-10:45
This course surveys ancient Greek literature from the Archaic period down to the Roman period (ca. 750 B.C. to A.D. 400), with special attention to authors such as Hesiod, Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Aeschylus, Euripides, Callimachus and Theocritus. In particular, the course will focus on the features of various prose and poetic genres such as epic, hymn, tragedy, comedy, history and pastoral. A central theme of the course will be the profound importance of the Homeric poems (both the Iliad and the Odyssey) as both works of art in their own right and culturally definitive artifacts, and we will consider in detail what various Greek reactions to and interpretations of these poems reveal about the cultural and literary history of the ancient world.
CLSS 1100: Beginning Sanskrit 2
Andrew Merritt – TWThF 9:00-9:50
As the continuation of CLSS 1099 Beginning Sanskrit Language, this course completes the systematic introduction to the grammar of the Classical language as presented in our first semester textbook. The course proceeds to readings from Epic Sanskrit and then the Rigveda, which constitutes the most ancient stratum of Old Indic literature. As we make progress, we will continue to address questions of Sanskrit’s cultural context, etymological riches, and structural development from Proto-Indo-European, the language also ancestral to Greek, Latin, and English.
CLSS 2005: Age of Nero
Marden Nichols – MW 2:00-3:15
The reign of the emperor Nero, who reportedly “fiddled while Rome burned,” captures the popular imagination more than any other period in Roman history. How can we separate fact from fiction in the salacious stories of a ruler as notorious for his cold-blooded murders as he was for his megalomania? In this course, we will scrutinize images of Nero in biographies, histories, portraiture, and plays, from antiquity to the present day. We will be equally concerned with the masterworks of the so-called Neronian Renaissance, which yielded some of Rome’s greatest achievements in literature, architecture, and art. Ancient sources (read in translation) will include texts by Suetonius, Tacitus, Seneca, Petronius, Lucan, and Persius.
CLSS 2022: Women & Gender in Ancient Egypt
Lingxin Zhang – TTh 11:00-12:15
Who is the “femme fatale” in ancient Egyptian literature? How did “love spells” work? What did ancient Egyptian women write about in their private letters? This course guides students to explore the lives of queens, elite women, and ordinary people by reading the words written by these women and the words written about them. We will explore how ancient Egyptians conveyed sexual differences and established gender norms. We will then investigate the exceptional circumstances under which these norms are challenged. This class relies on textual sources, material cultures, and archaeological evidence from ancient Egypt. It supplements the discussion with relevant theories in gender studies.
CLSS 2076: Greek Drama on the World Stage
Claire Catenaccio – MW 11:00-12:15
What are the origins of drama? How did tragedy and comedy develop? Why do ancient plays continue to fascinate audiences across the world today? In this course, undergraduates engage with the diverse dramatic art of Ancient Greece. We read plays drawn from the many performance genres of the ancient Mediterranean, including works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes (all in English translation). In discussing these plays, we examine the conventions of tragedy and comedy; the social, economic, and political context of drama throughout its history; costumes, masks, and set design; music and dance; the art of translation; and the continuing relevance of theatrical performance today. More than two millennia after its invention, Greek drama continues to thrive on the world stage.
CLSS 3073: Survival of Ancient Texts
Justin Haynes – T 3:30-6:00
This course will examine the material and intellectual pathways by which ancient Greek and Roman literary culture has survived to the present day. We will study the evolving technology that made this transmission possible, from scroll to codex to printed book, as well as the history of writing and scripts. We will also consider how changing tastes, values, and religion impacted which texts were preserved and which would become lost forever. We will read medieval and early modern literary responses to classical texts, and we will learn how the ancient texts we can so easily access today were produced by generations of scholars working from dozens, or in some cases, hundreds of manuscripts. No knowledge of Latin or Greek is required.
Classics: Latin (Spring 2025)
CLSL 1012: Latin II
Andrew Merritt – MTWTh 1:00-1:50
Latin II is the second course in the two-semester set of First Year Latin. In this second half, students will read Latin from original texts written in both prose and poetry. In particular, for prose, Caesar’s Commentarii de bello Gallico, Book 1, will provide us with both textbook grammar cases and an overview of Rome’s foreign policy in the first century BC. For poetry, we will read a selection from the poems written by Catullus, the first lyric and elegiac Roman poet whose work was transmitted to us (almost) completely; as a condition for, and a function of, reading verse, students will be also introduced to classical metrics (especially stichic hexameter, elegiac couplet, and hendecasyllable). Caesar, Bellum Gallicum 1, will be read from Ewan’s edition for Bristol Classical Press; Catullus from Garrison’s anthology The Student’s Catullus (Oklahoma); both books are available at the GU’s bookshop.
CLSL 2062: Seneca’s Stoic Letters
Josiah Osgood – MW 2:00-3:15
Near the end of his life Seneca, a speech-writer and aide to the emperor Nero, withdrew from politics and began work on an innovative series of philosophic letters. Addressed to his friend Lucilius but intended for a wider readership, the letters mix vignettes from Roman life with Stoic teachings to show how to overcome personal setbacks and achieve happiness. Seneca offers advice on what kind of books to read, how to build friendships, and many other practical matters. He also satirizes the Romans of his day for their garish villas, wasteful dinner parties, and cruel treatment of slaves. In this class, we read a selection of Seneca’s letters in Latin and discuss his use of the epistolary form, his penchant for graphic imagery and witty aphorisms, and his influence on later literature and the resurgence of interest in Stoicism today.
CLSL 2080: Augustine’s Confessions
Justin Haynes – TTh 2:00-3:15
In this course we will read an intimate portrait of the life and times of an ancient Roman and saint in his own words, unmediated by any translation. Augustine’s Confessions is often credited with defining the genre of autobiography, and there can be no doubt that its influence on later literature has been profound. It also happens to be highly entertaining and almost novelistic in its characters and unexpected situations, but at the same time disarming in its apparent honesty and realism. Through close reading, students will increase their knowledge of everyday life in the Roman empire while viewing it from the perspective of one of that empire’s greatest minds.
Classics: Greek (Spring 2025)
CLSG 1012: Ancient Greek II
Charles McNelis – MTWTh 12:00-12:50
A continued intensive introduction to the ancient Greek language with primary emphasis on the acquisition of reading skills. Drills in grammar and syntax. Programmed reading selections from a variety of ancient authors.
CLSG 2028: Sophocles
Claire Catenaccio – MW 3:30-4:45
This course introduces advanced students to the dramatic art of Sophocles through two of his plays, Ajax and Oedipus Tyrannus. We will read the entirety of both works in Greek. Ajax tells the story of a mighty warrior who turns against his commanders and ultimately takes his own life; Oedipus depicts a king whose famed wisdom is no match for the riddle of his own identity. What do these tragedies teach us about fate, free will, and the limits of heroism? In discussing these plays, we will examine the formal conventions of tragedy; the social, economic, and political context of theater in Athens; costume, mask, and set design; music and dance; textual transmission; the art of translation; and the continuing relevance of tragedy today. Students should expect to come away with improved fluency in reading Greek verse and a synoptic view of ancient tragedy in its historical context.
CLSG 2088: Biblical Greek
Andrew Merritt – TTh 11:00-12:15
This course provides students with the skills needed to engage with Biblical literature in the Koiné Greek of the Hellenistic Age and Early Roman Empire. We will consider linguistic differences from Classical Greek, such as simplification of morphological categories and influence from Hebrew and Aramaic. Beginning with selections from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, we will focus on the conceptual world of the original authors and its reflection in the Judaism of the Late Second Temple Period. In light of this context, we will proceed to selections from the New Testament, paying particular attention to the chronology of its constituent texts in relation to the historical development of Early Christianity.