Classical Studies (CLST)
CLST 0010 Archaeology & Technology
This seminar explores how humans apply and modify technologies in contexts as diverse as everyday life, major politico-economic undertakings, or scholarly research. We investigate this through a comparison of technologies of the past with technologies of the present used to study the past. We will dig into the details of topics like building pyramids and tombs, the function of ancient astronomical devices, pre-telegraph long-distance communication, tools for cutting and carving stone, and kilns for firing pottery. Archaeologists study these issues by examining the material remains of past societies: the cut-marks on stone blocks, extant tomb structures, the debris of manufacturing activities, and much more. Today's technologies enable the detailed scientific examination of the evidence, improving our understanding of the past. Thus, in parallel with our investigation of past technologies, we will also study the history of the application of present technologies to research on the archaeological record. We will dig into topics like the first uses of computers and databases, the development of statistical methods, early digital 3d modeling of objects and architecture, the adoption of geophysical prospection and geographic information systems, and the emerging uses of machine learning. In some cases, we can even compare old and new technologies directly, such as with land measurement and surveying techniques. Throughout the class we will engage in readings and discussions on the theory of humans and technology, to gain a better understanding of how processes such as innovation function in all time periods.
1 Course Unit
CLST 0014 Rome & America
This course explores a range of social structures and contexts, cultural understandings and intellectual practices where the influence of Roman exemplars is discernible in both historical and present-day America. It presents students with Roman and American materials placed in explicit or implicit dialog with one another: e.g., descriptions and discussions of political processes and structures; attitudes towards games, public entertainments, and communal cohesion; rhetorics and vocabularies of public space. Among other tasks and projects, students will stage a 'reimagination' of the Constitutional (Philadelphia) Convention of 1787, which resulted in the United States Constitution. They will also emulate ancient moralists and satirists, who attacked Rome's 'Bread and Circuses' culture, by focusing their attention upon comparable practices in modern America.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 0015 First Year Seminar--Emotions
The field known as “History of the Emotions” has gained tremendous prominence in literary and cultural studies. But do emotions have a history? If so, what methods do we use for discovering and recounting that history? To what extent does history of the emotions borrow from other fields? These include all the fields that relate to what we call “emotions studies”: psychology, sociology, political theory, philosophy, and neuroscience. In this seminar we will explore some key methodologies and subject matters for history of the emotions. We’ll look at some philosophical reflections on emotion (including Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, as well as more recent moral philosophers); we’ll also look at political theorists, including Thomas Hobbes; we’ll explore psychoanalytic perspectives, historical research, and some of the work of neuroscientists; and we will take these ideas into explorations of art, literature, and music. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ENGL 0301
1 Course Unit
CLST 0016 The Iliad and its Afterlife
As the first work in the western tradition, Homer's Trojan War epic, the Iliad, has been a constant point of reference for thinking about heroism, friendship, the search for meaning in the face of mortality, and the effects of war on individuals and societies. We will begin with a close reading of the Iliad in English translation, paying attention both to the story of its hero Achilles as he experiences disillusionment, frustration, anger, triumph, revenge, and reconciliation and to the poem's broader portrait of a society at war; this portrait incorporates the diverse perspectives of invaders and defenders, men and women, old and young, gods and mortals, along with tantalizing glimpses of peacetime life. We will then consider how later writers and artists have drawn on the Iliad to present a range of perspectives of their own -- whether patriotic, mock heroic, romantic, or pacifist -- with particular attention to 20th and 21st century responses by such figures as W.H. Auden, Simone Weil, Jonathan Shay, Cy Twombly, David Malouf, Alice Oswald, and Adrienne Rich. No previous knowledge of the Iliad is required. The course is intended for anyone who is interested in how cultures use their shared myths both to affirm and to question their central values.
1 Course Unit
CLST 0017 Private Life in Ancient Rome
What was it like to live in the Roman world? What did that world look, taste and smell like? How did Romans raise their families, entertain themselves, understand death, and interact with their government? What were Roman values and how did they differ from our own? This course takes as its subject the everyday lives of individuals and explores those lives using the combined tools of archaeology, art and written sources. In doing so, it seeks to integrate the well-known monuments of Roman civilization into a world of real people. Some of the topics explored will include Roman houses, diet, leisure, gender and sexuality, slavery, and poverty.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 0018 Classical Antiquity and the Modern World
The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, whether individually, together, or in relation to other ancient civilizations, have frequently been seen as ancestors of the modern world. This ancestry has been seen both as a common and unifying heritage and as one that divides. This course will consider the relationship between Classical Antiquity and the modern world in the light of different themes, including those of Civilization, Empire, Race, Ethnicity, Simplicity and Complexity, Morality, Religion, and Universality. Classes will focus on discussion of readings with an emphasis on coming to grips with multiple and conflicting points of view. Students will write a research paper related to one of the themes mentioned above or to another one of similar importance.
1 Course Unit
CLST 0019 Town and Country in Ancient Greece
The ancient city of Athens, Greece, is renowned as the birthplace of democracy; Sparta is famous for its warlike society; Olympia for the Olympic Games; and Delphi for its famed oracle. But the Greek landscape was dotted with hundreds of other cities, towns, villages, sanctuaries, and hamlets. This seminar is a journey through town and country in ancient Greece, from dense urban spaces to vast forests and agro-pastoral countrysides. We will examine many lines of evidence: (1) ancient texts (e.g., Homeric epics, Hesiod's depiction of rural life, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, the tragedies and comedies of the great playwrights, the geography of Strabo, the travel writing of Pausanias); (2) inscriptions that record details of life and death ; and (3) archaeology (site discovery and excavation, recovery of the material remains of everyday life). These sources will reveal much information about how urban and rural life were organized. A central aim of this seminar is to address this question: is the past a foreign country, or is there nothing new under the sun?
1 Course Unit
CLST 0020 Travel and Ethnography
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.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 0020
1 Course Unit
CLST 0021 Percy Jackson and Friends: Ancient Greece and Rome in Children's and Young Adult Culture
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.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 0101 Ancient Greece
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.
Fall
Also Offered As: ANCH 0101, HIST 0720
1 Course Unit
CLST 0102 Ancient Rome
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.
Spring
Also Offered As: ANCH 0102, HIST 0721
1 Course Unit
CLST 1100 Ancient Mediterranean Empires
What constituted an empire in antiquity and how was imperialism legitimized? Which measures were used to maintain and organize imperial power? How did foreign rule affect the daily life of people all over the Mediterranean? In this course we will discuss and compare ancient empires from Achaemenid Persia to Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic kingdoms of his successors to the emergence of Rome as one of the most influential empires in world history. Topics that will be discussed include ancient ideas and concepts of imperial rule, patterns of political, economic and cultural power and their interrelations as well as imperial crises and local resistance. All texts will be discussed in translation. There are no prerequisites.
Fall
Also Offered As: ANCH 1100
1 Course Unit
CLST 1102 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?
The Roman Empire, teetering under the weight of its bureaucracy, oppressed by the demands of its soldiers, weakened by wave after wave of barbarian invasions, and, with the rise of Christianity, confronted by its own immorality, finally fell when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was sent into exile in 476 CE. That, at least, is one version of the story. In truth, there are many stories that can be told of the period between the apogee of the Roman empire in the 2nd c. AD and the rise of Christianity and Islam and origins of the so-called Barbarian Kingdoms in the 7th and 8th centuries AD. This course will explore this period of 600 years, using methodologies from history, archaeology, social science and the sciences to understand the complex problem of empire and its evolutions. No previous knowledge of ancient or medieval history required.
Also Offered As: ANCH 1102
1 Course Unit
CLST 1200 Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece and Rome
What is being a man, being a woman, being masculine, being feminine, being neither, being both? Is sex about pleasure, domination, identity, reproduction, or something else? Are sexual orientation and gender identity innate? How can words, myths and stories inform cultural assumptions about sex and gender? Did people in ancient times have a concept of sexuality? How do gendered English terms (like "girly", "effeminate", or "feisty") compare to gendered ancient Greek and Latin terms, like virtus, which connotes both "virtue" and "masculinity"? Why did the Roman and English speaking worlds have to borrow the word "clitoris" from the ancient Greeks? How did people in antiquity understand consent? Can we ever get access to the perspectives of ancient women? In this introductory undergraduate course, we will learn about sex and gender in ancient Greece and Rome. We will discuss similarities and differences between ancient and modern attitudes, and we will consider how ancient texts, ancient art, ancient ideas and ancient history have informed modern western discussions, assumptions and legislation. Our main readings will be of ancient texts, all in English translation; authors studied will include Ovid, Aristophanes, Plato, Euripides, and Sappho. Class requirements will include participation in discussion as well as quizzes, reading responses, and a final exam.
Also Offered As: COML 1200, GSWS 1200
1 Course Unit
CLST 1201 The Ancient Economy
This class presents an introduction to economies before economics, a study of economic activity in the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Greece and Rome have been called some of the first "global" economies - they engaged in long-distance trade, introduced the first coinage systems, and built and manufactured at large scales. At the same time, they remained agrarian societies, with majority peasant populations, high levels of inequality and social systems that often placed social capital ahead of profit. Using textual sources, archaeology and techniques from the natural and social sciences, this class will not only look at basic elements of economic activity in the ancient world - demographics, trade, monetization, industry - but also ask critical questions about how - or if -modern economic methods can be applied to the distant past. No previous knowledge of the ancient world or economics is necessary.
Fall or Spring
1 Course Unit
CLST 1202 The Ancient Economy
This class presents an introduction to economies before economics, a study of economic activity in the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Greece and Rome have been called some of the first "global" economies - they engaged in long-distance trade, introduced the first coinage systems, and built and manufactured at large scales. At the same time, they remained agrarian societies, with majority peasant populations, high levels of inequality and social systems that often placed social capital ahead of profit. Using textual sources, archaeology and techniques from the natural and social sciences, this class will not only look at basic elements of economic activity in the ancient world - demographics, trade, monetization, industry - but also ask critical questions about how - or if -modern economic methods can be applied to the distant past. No previous knowledge of the ancient world or economics is necessary.
Fall or Spring
Also Offered As: ANCH 1202
1 Course Unit
CLST 1205 Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient World
Modern political and artistic movements often appeal to an ancient past in order to construct their own social and racial identities. But how did ancient peoples understand themselves and others? How should we understand race and ethnicity in the ancient past? And how are perceptions of the past used today to construct or dismantle structures of power? This course explores both ancient and modern representations of race and ethnicity in antiquity. We will investigate both how ancient peoples around or near the Mediterranean (e.g. Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Persians, and Nubians) understood difference and also how modern eras have appropriated ancient identities. Our dialogues will include ancient ethnographies, literature, and visual arts as well as modern theories and media, with an emphasis on active learning and collaboration. Students will be encouraged to produce both analytical and creative responses to our materials.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 1205
1 Course Unit
CLST 1206 Citizenship, Belonging and Exclusion in the Roman World
What did it mean to be a citizen in the Roman world? What did citizens do in order to support their claims to belong in the civic community? Conversely, what about those members of the community who were judged not to belong? What limitations acted upon them, and what were the terms of their exclusion? This course will begin by exploring practices of citizenship in the Roman Republic and Empire: voting, serving in the military, running for office, and so on. It will then examine the experiences of those who, for some reason, were excluded from one or more of these roles. Fundamentally, our question is: “To what extent was Roman society diverse and inclusive?” No prior knowledge of Roman History is required. Texts will be discussed in translation.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 1206
1 Course Unit
CLST 1207 Greek Parties, Speech, and Identity
The ancient Greek symposium existed as a stylized elite drinking party from the Archaic period until the end of the Roman Empire a millennium later, inspiring many works of literature and philosophical debates. Conversation and correct behavior were key at these parties to form social bonds and indicate one’s belonging to Greek elite society while simultaneously excluding certain demographics from the group. In this course we will learn about the ancient Greek world through the institution of the symposium and will complicate our understanding of the ancient world by putting it in dialog with our modern cultural expectations. We will read from a selection of authors in translation including Plato, Plutarch, and Athenaeus, focusing on the conversational and presentational aspects of the texts. Students will also develop personalized techniques for public speaking and will practice several varieties of public speaking inspired by the symposium. This course is a CWiC Critical Speaking Seminar, in which most of the course grade will be based on oral assignments. No prior experience with the ancient world or with public speaking is required.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 1207
1 Course Unit
CLST 1300 Introduction to Mediterranean Archaeology
The cultures of Greece and Rome, what we call classical antiquity, span over a thousand years of multicultural achievement in the Mediterranean. This course tells the story of what it was like to live in the complex societies of ancient Greece and Rome. This story is told principally using the art, architecture, pottery and coins produced by these societies. We will examine both the bold and sexy, and the small and humble, from the Parthenon to wooden huts, from the Aphrodite of Knidos to the bones of a fisherman named Peter.
Fall
Also Offered As: ANTH 1300
1 Course Unit
CLST 1301 Great Discoveries in Archaeology
In this course, we examine famous (Pompeii, Troy, Machu Picchu) and not-so-famous (Uluburun, Kalamianos) archaeological sites, mainly in the Old World of the Mediterranean, Near East, and Asia, but also in the New World of North and South America. We adopt a thematic and comparative approach to delve deeper to explore these societies and examine cultural similarities and differences across the ancient world. A typical sequence of meetings will begin with lecture on a particular theme, such as Writing Systems or Sacred Spaces and Places, followed by the presentation of relevant monuments, sites, or regions from different parts of the world, with discussion and assessment of the cross-cultural similarities and differences. In this way, both the great diversity of culture in our world, as well as our underlying similarities, can be revealed. How different are we from our ancestors who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago? Museum visits and exercises will allow students to engage with the material creations of these civilizations. CLST 123 is a non-technical introduction for students interested in archaeology, history, art history, anthropology, or related subjects. There are no prerequisites. The course fulfills the Cross Cultural Analysis foundational requirement.
1 Course Unit
CLST 1302 Food and Fire: Archaeology in the Laboratory
This course will let students explore the essential heritage of human technology through archaeology. People have been transforming their environment from the first use of fire for cooking. Since then, humans have adapted to the world they created using the resources around them. We use artifacts to understand how the archaeological record can be used to trace breakthroughs such as breaking stone and bone, baking bread, weaving cloth and firing pottery and metals. The seminar will meet in the Penn Museum's Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials. Students will become familiar with the Museum's collections and the scientific methods used to study different materials. Class sessions will include discussions, guest presentations, museum field trips, and hands-on experience in the laboratory.
Fall or Spring
Also Offered As: ANTH 1480, NELC 0910
1 Course Unit
CLST 1303 The Material Past in a Digital World
The material remains of the human past -objects and spaces- provide tangible evidence of past people's lives. Today's information technologies improve our ability to document, study, and present these materials. But what does it mean to deal with material evidence in a virtual context? In this class, students will learn basic digital methods for studying the past while working with objects, including those in the collections of the Penn Museum. This class will teach relational database design and 3D object modeling. As we learn about acquiring and managing data, we will gain valuable experience in the evaluation and use of digital tools. The digital humanities are a platform both for learning the basic digital literacy students need to succeed in today's world and for discussing the human consequences of these new technologies and data. We will discuss information technology's impact on the study and presentation of the past, including topics such as public participation in archaeological projects, educational technologies in museum galleries, and the issues raised by digitizing and disseminating historic texts and objects. Finally, we will touch on technology's role in the preservation of the past in today's turbulent world. No prior technical experience is required, but we hope students will share an enthusiasm for the past.
Also Offered As: ANTH 1303, ARTH 0127, HIST 0871
1 Course Unit
CLST 1500 Greek & Roman Mythology
Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? We investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.
Spring
Also Offered As: COML 1500
1 Course Unit
CLST 1501 Ancient Greek Philosophy
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.
Fall
Also Offered As: PHIL 1110
1 Course Unit
CLST 1502 Greek and Roman Moral Philosophy
A survey of ethical philosophy in the Ancient Greek and Roman tradition. Works studied will include those of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics, including writings of later Roman authors such as Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The class will be run as a seminar. All works will be read in English translation.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: PHIL 1111
1 Course Unit
CLST 1503 Ancient Political Thought
Through reading texts of Plato (Socrates), Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, the student encounters a range of political ideas deeply challenging to--and possibly corrosive of--today's dominant democratic liberalism. Can classical and medieval thinking offer insight into modern impasses in political morality? Is such ancient thinking plausible, useful, or dangerous?
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: PSCI 0600
1 Course Unit
CLST 1600 Dangerous Books of Antiquity
All books, even those regarded by some as "classics", are potentially dangerous. This course will survey a selection of ancient books that got their authors in trouble, were censored, inspired rebellion, or enabled social (and antisocial) movements, down to the present moment. Most of the books read will come from ancient Greece or Rome, but some will come from other ancient cultures, such as Egypt, the Near East, and China. Issues involved will include atheism, race and ethnicity, sex and gender, nationalism, magic, and mysticism. The course will make use of brief lectures and presentations but leave as much time as possible for seminar-style discussion.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 1601 Ancient Drama
This course will introduce students to some of the greatest works of dramatic literature in the western canon. We will consider the social, political, religious and artistic functions of drama in ancient Greece and Rome, and discuss both differences and similarities between ancient drama and modern art forms. The course will also pursue some broader goals: to improve students skills as readers and scholarly critics of literature, both ancient and modern; to observe the implications of form for meaning, in considering, especially, the differences between dramatic and non-dramatic kinds of cultural production: to help students understand the relationship of ancient Greek and Roman culture to the modern world; and to encourage thought about some big issues, in life as well as in literature: death, heroism, society, action and meaning.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: COML 1601
1 Course Unit
CLST 1602 World Literature
How do we think 'the world' as such? Globalizing economic paradigms encourage one model that, while it connects distant regions with the ease of a finger-tap, also homogenizes the world, manufacturing patterns of sameness behind simulations of diversity. Our current world-political situation encourages another model, in which fundamental differences are held to warrant the consolidation of borders between Us and Them, "our world" and "theirs." This course begins with the proposal that there are other ways to encounter the world, that are politically compelling, ethically important, and personally enriching--and that the study of literature can help tease out these new paths. Through the idea of World Literature, this course introduces students to the appreciation and critical analysis of literary texts, with the aim of navigating calls for universality or particularity (and perhaps both) in fiction and film. "World literature" here refers not merely to the usual definition of "books written in places other than the US and Europe, "but any form of cultural production that explores and pushes at the limits of a particular world, that steps between and beyond worlds, or that heralds the coming of new worlds still within us, waiting to be born. And though, as we read and discuss our texts, we will glide about in space and time from the inner landscape of a private mind to the reaches of the farthest galaxies, knowledge of languages other than English will not be required, and neither will any prior familiary with the literary humanities. In the company of drunken kings, botanical witches, ambisexual alien lifeforms, and storytellers who've lost their voice, we will reflect on, and collectively navigate, our encounters with the faraway and the familiar--and thus train to think through the challenges of concepts such as translation, narrative, and ideology. Texts include Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula K. LeGuin, Salman Rushdie, Werner Herzog, Jamaica Kincaid, Russell Hoban, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Arundhathi Roy, and Abbas Kiarostami.
Fall or Spring
Also Offered As: COML 1191, ENGL 1179
1 Course Unit
CLST 1603 Hercules Ancient & Modern
The mythical hero Hercules, one of the most well-known figures to emerge from the ancient Mediterranean, has remained popular around the world in one form or another to the present day, from Asia to America. What explains the enduring fascination? Hercules is a figure of multiples: myriad labors, multiple wives, multiple fathers, and multiple identities. In this course, like ancient writers and artists, we will use Hercules to explore questions of mortality, divinity, masculinity, madness, and contradiction. To that end, we will read Hercules in different ancient genres--Tragedy, Comedy, and Philosophy--and also in modern poetry, comics, television, and film. How do works erase or problematize the contradictory nature of our hero? How do other American "heroes" embody Herculean contradictions?
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 1700 Classical Traditions
A broad consideration of the ways in which writers and artists from the early modern era to the present day have responded to the classical tradition, borrowing from, imitating, questioning, and challenging their classical predecessors. Through modern reworkings of ancient epic, tragedy, biography, and lyric by authors ranging from Shakespeare and Racine to contemporary poets, painters, and filmmakers, we will ask what the terms "classical" and "tradition" might mean and will track the continuities and differences between antiquity and the modern world. Should we see ancient Greek and Roman culture as an inheritance, a valuable source of wealth bequeathed to the modern age? Or is there something wrong with that picture? How do ancient texts have to be adapted and transformed if they are to speak to modern conditions and concerns? This is an introductory-level course open to anyone who cares about the relationship between the present and the past.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ENGL 1009
1 Course Unit
CLST 1701 Scandalous Arts in Ancient and Modern Communities
What do the ancient Greek comedian Aristophanes, the Roman satirist Juvenal, have in common with rappers Snoop Dogg and Eminem? Many things, in fact, but perhaps most fundamental is their delight in shocking audiences and upending social norms. This course will examine the various arts (including literary, visual and musical media) that transgress the boundaries of taste and convention in ancient Greco-Roman culture and our own era. We will consider, among other topics, why communities feel compelled to repudiate some forms of scandalous art, while turning others - especially those that have come down to us from remote historical periods - into so-called classics.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: COML 1701
1 Course Unit
CLST 1999 Independent Study
Coursework and/or research undertaken independently by the student, at a level equivalent to other 1000-level (introductory) courses, supervised by a faculty member.
1 Course Unit
CLST 3101 Periclean Athens
Athens in the 5th Century BCE is often viewed as a high point of human civilization. We will assess this claim by looking at the period's cultural achievements (in such areas as drama, architecture, and oratory) within their social and political contexts. Topics for discussion include: the structure and workings of the Athenian democracy; the interplay between pro-democratic and anti-democratic positions in Athenian political life; the connections between democracy and imperialism; conceptions of citizenship and relations between citizens and non-citizens (women, slaves, and resident foreigners); the role of the law courts in both dispute resolution and elite competition; sexual politics; and the civic significance of religious ritual.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3101
1 Course Unit
CLST 3102 The Rise and Decline of Macedonia
In this course, we will study the rise and development of Macedonia from a tiny kingdom on the northern fringes of the Greek world to one of the major powers of the region and beyond. Regarded by the Greeks as an at least semi-barbarian culture on the periphery, Macedonia became the dominant power in the Greek world during the fourth century BC and its king Alexander the Great set out to conquer the world. After his death, Macedonia was one of the Hellenistic kingdoms competing for power and influence in the Mediterranean until it finally came under Roman control. Topics that will be discussed include questions of ethnicity and identity, Macedonian kingship, culture and society (including the role of women) and the role of Macedonian traditions in the Hellenistic era in general. Special emphasis will therefore be laid on critical reading and interpretation of ancient literary texts, documentary evidence and archaeological material. that will be discussed include questions of ethnicity and identity, Macedonian kingship, culture and society (including the role of women) and the role of Macedonian traditions in the Hellenistic era in general.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3102
1 Course Unit
CLST 3103 The Hellenistic and Roman Near East
In this course we will study the history of the Hellenistic and Roman period from a Near Eastern perspective. From the conquests of Alexander the Great to the end of Roman rule in late antiquity, this region was the scene of conflicts, but also of peaceful and fruitful interactions between Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Jews, Syrians, Arabs and many other societies. What was the impact of Greek and Roman rule and how did the peoples of the region react to these fundamental changes? On the other hand, how did they influence the culture and worldview of their conquerors? We will use historical texts, documents and archaeological evidence to discuss these political, cultural and religious encounters that made the Near East to a key region of Greco-Roman history. All texts will be discussed in translation. No prerequisites, although it would be useful to have some background in Hellenistic and/or Roman history.
Also Offered As: ANCH 3103, NELC 3060
1 Course Unit
CLST 3104 Greek World After Alexander the Great
This class is designed as a detailed investigation of the world created by Alexander the Great. We will cover the three hundred year period known as the Hellenistic Age from the career of Alexander the Great (354-323 BC) until the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium (31 BC). This was a period during which the world of the Greeks underwent extraordinary and far-reaching changes, as Greek culture was established as far afield as northwestern India, central Asia and Egypt. In the same period kingdoms controlled by Alexanders's Successors used Greek culture to define their rule, establishing a Greek culture of the elite in regions which previously had been dominated by the Persians. As Greek and non-Greek worlds collided, a new interpretation of Greek culture emerged, giving rise, among other things, to universities and professional schools, state subsidized health care, triumphalist architecture, the heroization of the noble savage, coinage with royal portraits, the deification of men and a multitude of other social, artistic and political forms familiar to us. It was an age of radical change, dislocation, as Greek populations colonized regions previously unkown to them.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3104
1 Course Unit
CLST 3105 The Etruscans
The Etruscans, who spoke a language unlike any others known, were cast by their Greek and Roman rivals as outsiders and enemies: pirates, lovers of luxury, loose women. Today we must rely on the archaeological evidence of painted tombs, decorated Tuscan temples and massive engineering works to correct the picture. The course will survey a millennium (1st millennium BCE) of Etruscan culture through archaeological sites, shipwrecks and trading posts, works of art and everyday material culture, including the landscape and built environment, technology, seafaring and war, womens world, and the unique religion for which Etruria was famous, ending with a surprising array of examples of Etruscan heritage embraced by society from the time of Augustus to the present day.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3107 Age of Caesar
A course on Roman culture and society in a period of tumultuous political change, the lifetime of Julius Caesar (100-44BCE). Focuses on the interplay between shifting political and military realities and developments in social organization and literary production at Rome and in the wider Mediterranean world. The reception of Caesar in later ages will also be considered. Readings (all in translation) will include Catullus, Cicero, Lucretius, Plutarach, Sallust, Suetonius, and, of course, Caesar himself.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3107
1 Course Unit
CLST 3109 Living and Dying in Ancient Athens
This class is designed to explore the experience of daily life in ancient Athens, with special attention to the values and practices that constitute the habits of life in the classical period. Methodologically the class will attempt a bottom-up reconstruction of lived experience by focusing on those features of ordinary life that were taken for granted by the Greeks but which strike us as either alien, odd or hard to understand.Topics covered include: settlement and resource extraction; crops and risk mitigation; trade and manufacturing; slavery; sex work; the symposium; military service; and burial.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3109
1 Course Unit
CLST 3110 The Age of St. Augustine
Augustine of Hippo lived from 354 until 430 CE. This was a period of enormous political and social change, and also a period of profound intellectual discovery. Growing up in the Roman provinces of North Africa, Augustine was formed by late Roman culture and education, and absorbed and loved the greatest examples of classical Latin poetry and prose. In his youth he was a professional rhetorician, a teacher as well as a successful orator. Yet after his conversion to Christianity at the age of 31, he renounced much of his early formation, at least in name. He became a preacher and a priest, a bishop, an expositor of Christian thought, and a fierce polemicist. But he was never able to leave behind his early classical formation; as an adult he looks back on his childhood, poignantly remembering how he “wept for Dido” when he read the Aeneid at school. His life embodies the contradictions of the age. Augustine’s life and his writings give us a keen perspective on that tumultuous, fractured period of late Roman antiquity, when the empire was disintegrating through internal divisions and external threats. Central readings of our course will be Augustine’s Confessions and his City of God. We will also read works by his contemporaries, including philosophers, rhetoricians, and religious adversaries. We will explore his views on such issues as empire, slavery, childhood, sex and sexuality, Jews and Judaism, pedagogy, and free will. Assignments will involve regular posting of questions and ideas for discussion, one oral research presentation, and one final longer paper.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3201 Disasters in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Natural disasters occupy a powerful place in our imagination. Stories of floods plagues, earthquakes and storms excite and horrify us, and communities mobilize their resources quickly in response to these events. In the ancient Mediterranean world, natural disasters could take on potent meaning, indicating the anger or disfavor of the gods, acting as warnings against certain courses of action, or confirmations of individuals' fears or suspicions about the world in which they lived. In this course, we explore the evidence for some disasters in the ancient Mediterranean world, the ways in which contemporaries reacted to those disasters and interpreted their causes. This project is, of necessity, multidisciplinary, involving textual, archaeological, geological, and comparative materials and drawing on methodologies from history, political and archaeological science, and the emerging field of disaster studies. In the process, we will gain an appreciation of the social structures of communities in the period, the thought-world in which they operated, and the challenges and opportunities that attend a project of this sort. No prior knowledge of Ancient History is required, although it would be useful to have taken an introductory survey course such as ANCH 0100, ANCH 0101, or ANCH 0102. Texts will be discussed in translation.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3201, ANTH 3101
1 Course Unit
CLST 3203 Power and Peril: The Paradox of Monarchy among Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Jews
We imagine ancient Greece and Rome as the cradles of democracy and republicanism, early Judea as a pious theocracy, but monarchy was the most common and prevalent form of government in antiquity (and the premodern world in general). In this class, we will take a special look at kinship among the Jews, Greeks, and Romans to assess and discuss similarities, differences, and mutual influences. In all these cultures, the king was a polarizing figure in reality and in conception. On the one hand, some revered the monarch as ideal leader, and monarchy provided the language with which to describe and even imagine the very gods. On the other, monarchs were widely reviled in both theory and practice, from the Greek tyrants to biblical Saul. The Emperor Augustus loudly denied his own affinity to the office of king, even as he ruled alone and was revered as a god. In other words, kings stood both for the ideal and the worst form of government. This class confronts the paradox of monarchical rule and will, through the lens of the king, explore ideas of god, government, human frailty, and utopianism.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3203, JWST 3203, RELS 3203
1 Course Unit
CLST 3204 Lies My Ancient History Teacher Told Me
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.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3204
1 Course Unit
CLST 3205 Religion and the Polis
This class is designed to introduce students to the study of Greek religion with particular attention to the notion of polis religion, a recent model used to understand the function and structure of Greek religion. In this class we will look at the major institutions of Greek religion, notably sacrifice, festivals, and processions, but will also examine the importance of sanctuaries and temples in the heart of the city, on the edges of its territory and in the countryside. We will also examine religion as a system of belief and action, and will consider the intersection of local, state and international religious institutions.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 3205
1 Course Unit
CLST 3206 Jewish Diaspora in the Roman Empire
Under the Roman Empire, Jewish communities developed and flourished especially in the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Northern Africa, and Italy proper. In many of these cities, the Jews formed a considerable part of the population; they influenced the cultural, social, and political communal life and developed an identity that was distinctively different from that in Judea. In this seminar, we will trace Jewish life in the Diaspora under Roman rule. How did Jews and non-Jews interact? What was the legal status of Jewish communities under the Roman Empire? What caused conflicts and how were they solved? What can the history of Jewish Diaspora communities tell us about minorities in the Roman Empire in general? We will use literary texts, inscriptions, papyri, and archaeological material to answer these questions and many more.
Also Offered As: ANCH 3206, JWST 3206
1 Course Unit
CLST 3209 Foreigners in Rome
According to the stories the Romans told about the origins of their city, Rome began as a community of immigrants. As a growing metropolis and, eventually, the center of an empire, the city remained a magnet for people from other parts of the Empire and beyond. Foreigners came to the city as merchants and travelers, they settled here seeking a different and better life, pursuing a career, or escaping hardships in their home communities. Others were brought to Rome against their will, as prisoners or slaves. In this seminar, we will explore the different communities of foreigners and immigrants that shaped Rome. How and why did they move to the city? How did they experience their new home? How did they adapt to life in Rome and how, in turn, did they influence what we define as "Roman" today? Finally, what can the legal, social, political, and social status of immigrants tell us about Roman society in general? To answer these questions (and more), we will look at a wide array of primary sources, including literary texts, inscriptions, and material culture.
Also Offered As: ANCH 3209
1 Course Unit
CLST 3301 Excavating Ancient Cities: Troy & Gordion
The instructor has spent the last 30 years excavating the Turkish sites of Troy and Gordion, the latter of which has been explored under Penns sponsorship. The former was famous in antiquity as the site of the Trojan War; the latter served as the capital of the Phrygian Kingdom, ruled by Midas. Both of these are multi-period sites, with nine settlements built above each other during more than four millennia, and determining the chronology and appearance of each settlement has consistently been controversial. In this course we will examine the history of both sites, focusing on the problems of archaeological interpretation. Students will be placed in the position of the archaeologist and charged with re-interpreting the existing archaeological evidence.
1 Course Unit
CLST 3302 Material World in Archaeological Science
By focusing on the scientific analysis of inorganic archaeological materials, this course will explore processes of creation in the past. Class will take place in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will be team taught in three modules: analysis of lithics, analysis of ceramics and analysis of metals. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how the transformation of materials into objects provides key information about past human behaviors and the socio-economic contexts of production, distribution, exchange and use. Discussion topics will include invention and adoption of new technologies, change and innovation, use of fire, and craft specialization.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 2221, ARTH 0221, NELC 2960
1 Course Unit
CLST 3303 Living World in Archaeological Science
By focusing on the scientific analysis of archaeological remains, this course will explore life and death in the past. It takes place in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and is team taught in three modules: human skeletal analysis, analysis of animal remains, and analysis of plant remains. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how organic materials provide key information about past environments, human behavior, and cultural change through discussions of topics such as health and disease, inequality, and food.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 2267, NELC 2950
Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 5267
1 Course Unit
CLST 3305 Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome
An intensive exploration of Rome's urban topography during the Republican and Imperial periods (6th c. B.C. through 4th c. A.D.) Using archaeological and textual sources, including the Etruscan and Roman collections of the Penn Museum, the goal will be to reconstruct the built environment and decoration of Rome over the course of a millennium. Of interest to students of classics, archaeology, art history, and architecture. Some familiarity with Rome will be a plus, but is not required.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 3305
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 5305
1 Course Unit
CLST 3306 Archaeology of Anatolia
This class is devoted to the archaeology and history of Anatolia (ancient Turkey) from the beginning of the Bronze Age (3000 BC) to the end of the Byzantine period (1453 AD). Emphasis will be placed on the great empires in Anatolia (Hittite, Phrygian, Lydian, Urartian, Persian, Roman, and Byzantine), and on the great cities (Troy, Sardis, Ephesus, Constantinople). The course is intended to complement the major exhibit on Gordion, the Phrygians, and Anatolian archaeology that will open at the Penn Museum in February of 2016 and run for 10 months.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3307 Intro to Digital Archaeology
Students in this course will be exposed to the broad spectrum of digital approaches in archaeology with an emphasis on fieldwork, through a survey of current literature and applied learning opportunities that focus on African American mortuary landscapes of greater Philadelphia. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, we will work with stakeholders from cemetery companies, historic preservation advocacy groups, and members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to collect data from three field sites. We will then use these data to reconstruct the original plans, untangle site taphonomy, and assess our results for each site. Our results will be examined within the broader constellation of threatened and lost African American burial grounds and our interpretations will be shared with community stakeholders using digital storytelling techniques. This course can count toward the minor in Digital Humanities, minor in Archaeological Science and the Graduate Certificate in Archaeological Science.
Also Offered As: ANTH 3307, NELC 3950
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 5620
1 Course Unit
CLST 3309 Introduction to Museums
This course introduces students to the history, theory and modern practices of museums. Using the resources of the Penn Museum and other Philadelphia museums, students will study curatorial practice, education, exhibition design and conservation, while exploring the theoretical and ethical issues confronted by museums. Particularly relevant for those interested in archaeology, anthropology, art history, cultural heritage and public education.
Fall or Spring
Also Offered As: ARTH 3030
1 Course Unit
CLST 3310 Kinship and Connectivity in the Roman World
An individual's life course is often reflected, enhanced, and defined by their relations to other individuals. This course will investigate the concept of kinship in the Roman world through textual, visual, and archaeological evidence. We will explore relationships at all levels of society from the imperial family to the slaves and freedmen who were part of larger households, in order to understand how different relationships shaped and structured interactions in Roman society. Together, we will explore the following questions: how were relationships and bonds represented in the ancient world? What structures were in place for families to perpetuate themselves through biological or adoptive means? How could non-Roman citizens create family connections through formal and informal channels? How could relationships be celebrated in life and commemorated in death? We will use written evidence from ancient historians, visual evidence like the Altar of Peace, and archaeological evidence from cemeteries to examine how Roman notions of kinship shaped life and death in different social milieu.
1 Course Unit
CLST 3311 Penn Museum Curatorial Seminar: Reconfiguring the Classical World Galleries
The Greek galleries in the Penn Museum were opened in 1994, and the Etruscan and Roman galleries in 2003. The world was very different them, and many of the themes used to frame the artifacts in the galleries are not especially relevant to contemporary students, scholars, and visitors. In this course we will completely reorganize and reinstall the galleries digitally, creating a series of websites that will highlight the new layout and themes. We will work extensively with the Greek Etruscan, and Roman artifacts themselves to reconfigure the galleries, which will highlight the connections between antiquity and the contemporary world, focusing on themes such as armed conflict, trauma, migration, xenophobia, and wealth and poverty.
1 Course Unit
CLST 3312 Ages of Homer: An Archaeological Introduction to the Greek Bronze and Iron Ages
This illustrated lecture course surveys the prehistory and early history of the Greek world through texts and material remains, with the aim of bringing to life the society, economy, and politics of this ancient era. Among the topics are the rise and fall of the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean area, the Minoans of Crete and the Mycenaeans of the Greek mainland; the cataclysmic volcanic eruption on the island of Thera and its long-term consequences; the possibly historical Trojan War; the Homeric world of the Dark Age that followed the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces; and the Greek renaissance of the eighth century B.C.-including the adoption of the alphabet, the great colonizing movement, and the Panhellenic sanctuaries-that laid the foundation for the Classical world to come. Ages of Homer is part of a sequence of introductory courses on the archaeology of the Greco-Roman world , which also includes Introduction to Greek Archaeology (CLS 275) and Introduction to Roman Archaeology (CLST 274). There are no prerequisites, and these courses need not be taken in a particular order
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3314 Mining Archaeology
In ancient times, materials such as stone and metals were used to produce artifacts including pigments, jewelry, tools, and weapons. This course is designed to introduce students to research on the early exploitation of mineral resources. Which techniques were used to access and process raw materials in antiquity? Which archaeological methods can be used to investigate these features and artifacts? The course will provide worldwide examples through time, ranging from Stone Age flint mining, Iron Age rock salt mining to Medieval silver mining. Ethnographic studies and hands-on activities will contribute to our understanding of mining in archaeology, and artifacts from the Museum's collections will undergo scientific analysis in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials.
Spring
Also Offered As: ANTH 3219, NELC 4950
Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 5219
1 Course Unit
CLST 3315 The Past Preserved: Conservation In Archaeology
This course explores the scientific conservation of cultural materials from archaeological contexts. It is intended to familiarize students with the basics of artifact conservation but is not intended to train them as conservators. The course will cover how various materials interact with their deposit environments; general techniques for on-site conservation triage and retrieval of delicate materials; what factors need to be considered in planning for artifact conservation; and related topics. Students should expect to gain a thorough understanding of the role of conservation in archaeology and how the two fields interact.
Also Offered As: ANTH 3235, ARTH 0143, NELC 4955
Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 5235
1 Course Unit
CLST 3316 Plants and Society
Interactions between humans and the living landscape around us have played - and continue to play - a fundamental role in shaping our worldview. This course is designed to introduce students to the diverse ways in which humans interact with plants. We will focus on the integration of ethnographic information and archaeological case studies in order to understand the range of interactions between humans and plants, as well as how plants and people have profoundly changed one another. Topics will include the origins of agriculture; cooking and plant processing; human health and the world of ethnomedicine; and poisonous and psychoactive plants. We will examine ancient plant material firsthand at the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will handle botanical ecofacts from the Penn Museum's collections. Students will also carry out a substantial research project focused on an archaeological culture and plant species of their own interest.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 3240
Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 5240
1 Course Unit
CLST 3317 Archaeologies of Subalternity
This course addresses the various areas and approaches to "otherness" in ancient Mediterranean archaeology, and the power dynamics of oppression. We'll not only examine disempowerment around cultural identity, class, gender and sexuality, and race/ethnicity, but we'll spend equal time pondering how those subjects have been studied - or ignored - by classical archaeologists. The power relationships both inherent in the subjugation of various kinds of people in the ancient world, and in the academic discourses around them, are the themes of the course. While this course will be focused on the Bronze Age through late antique Mediterranean, those with other period/interests are most welcome. Students will be asked to bring their own interests to the course, which help shape the course.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3318 Landscapes and Seascapes of the Ancient Mediterranean
The Mediterranean environment is both diverse and unique, and nurtured numerous complex societies along its shores in antiquity. This seminar offers a primer on theoretical and methodological approaches to studying landscapes and seascapes of the Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to the early modern era, at scales from local to international and on land and underwater. Concepts from processual, post-processual, and current archaeologies will be considered, and field techniques including excavation and surface survey, remote sensing and geophysics, GIS modeling, and ethnography/ethnoarchaeology are examined. Course content and discussion focus on case studies that illustrate how these tools are used to reconstruct the appearance and resources of the natural environment; overland and maritime routes; settlement location, size, function, and demography; social and economic networks; and agricultural, pastoral, and nomadic lifeways. Seminar participants will develop case studies of their own geographical and chronological interest.
Not Offered Every Year
Mutually Exclusive: AAMW 6130, CLST 5318
1 Course Unit
CLST 3319 World Heritage in Global Conflict
Heritage is always political. Such a statement might refer to the everyday politics of local stakeholder interests on one end of the spectrum, or the volatile politics of destruction and erasure of heritage during conflict, on the other. If heritage is always political then one might expect that the workings of World Heritage might be especially fraught given the international dimension. In particular, the intergovernmental system of UNESCO World Heritage must navigate the inherent tension between state sovereignty and nationalist interests and the wider concerns of a universal regime. The World Heritage List has almost 1200 properties has many such contentious examples, including sites in Iraq, Mali, Syria, Crimea, Palestine, Armenia and Cambodia. As an organization UNESCO was born of war with an explicit mission to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally yet has found its own history increasingly entwined with that of international politics and violence.
Fall or Spring
Also Offered As: ANTH 2840, NELC 2920
1 Course Unit
CLST 3320 Mycenae, Pylos and Troy
The Iliad of Homer recounts the tale of a great war fought by Greek and Trojan armies before the walls of Troy’s lofty citadel. This epic tells of gods, heroes, and magical places already part of a deep past when Homer’s work was set to writing, ca. 700 B.C. Does the Homeric story of the Trojan War have a basis in real events? Scholars have long pointed to the Mycenaean civilization, which flourished on the mainland of Greece in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600–1200 B.C.), as the inspiration for the Homeric stories. In this course, we will examine the archaeology of the great centers of the Late Bronze Age in Greece and Anatolia, particularly Mycenae, Pylos, and Troy. Our main aim will be to better understand the social, political, and economic context of this Late Bronze Age world, which may shed light on the possibility that a “Trojan War” of some kind actually occurred. The primary focus on archaeology is supplemented by readings from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3321 Surface Archaeology
Non-invasive and non-destructive methods make up an ever-greater proportion of archaeological investigations, for both intellectual and practical reasons. These methods comprise collection of data from the surface (pedestrian surface survey, geophysical prospection, geoarchaeology) and from above-ground platforms (drones, aircraft, balloons, kites, satellites), using a variety of sensors from human perception to multispectral scanning devices. The data acquired from these methods complement the contextual information drawn from traditional excavation, but also allow the archaeologist to address diverse research questions at a scale much greater than the excavated site. Aspiring archaeologists should have a good working knowledge of surface archaeological methods. In this course, we will delve deeply into these methods, and read and analyze case studies to expose strengths and weaknesses and to identify best practices. Students will have the opportunity for hands-on training in the Philadelphia area or elsewhere.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 3221
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 5321
1 Course Unit
CLST 3401 Greek Art and Artifact
This lecture course surveys Greek art and artifacts from Sicily to the Black Sea from the 10th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE, including the age of Alexander and the Hellenistic Kingdoms. Public sculpture and painting on and around grand buildings and gardens, domestic luxury arts of jewelry, cups and vases, mosaic floors, and cult artefacts are discussed. Also considered are the ways in which heroic epic, religious and political themes are used to engaged viewers' emotions and served both domestic and the public aims. We discuss the relationships of images and things to space and structure, along with ideas of invention and progress, and the role of monuments, makers and patrons in Greek society.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 2250
1 Course Unit
CLST 3402 Hellenistic and Roman Art and Artifact
This lecture course surveys the political, religious and domestic arts, patronage and display in Rome's Mediterranean, from the 2nd c. BCE to Constantine's 4th-c. Christianized empire. Our subjects are images and decorated objects in their cultural, political and socio-economic contexts (painting, mosaic, sculpture, luxury and mass-produced arts in many media). We start with the Hellenistic cosmopolitan culture of the Greek kingdoms and their neighbors, and late Etruscan and Republican Italy; next we map Imperial Roman art as developed around the capital city Rome, as well as in the provinces of the vast empire.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 2260
1 Course Unit
CLST 3405 Roman Sculpture
Survey of the Republican origins and Imperial development of Roman sculpture - free-standing, relief, and architectural - from ca. 150 BC to 350 AD. We concentrate on sculpture in the capital city and on court and state arts, emphasizing commemorative public sculpture and Roman habits of decorative display; genres examined include relief, portraits, sarcophagi, luxury and minor arts(gems, metalwork, coinage). We evaluate the choice and evolution of styles with reference to the functions of sculptural representation in Roman culture and society.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 4270
1 Course Unit
CLST 3406 Late Antique Arts
What is 'Late Antiquity'? In 312 when Roman emperor Constantine inaugurated a Christian empire, 'Roman' culture was centuries old. The period ca. 200-650 CE saw profound transformations that launched Medieval, Byzantine and Islamic traditions. In this epoch of upheaval destruction was frequent but partial: Rome long survived, Constantine's 'new Rome,' Constantinople flourished, and around the Empire both proto-global visual culture and local forms prospered. Roman cultural models authorized both innovation and passion for tradition: we critique art-historical models for Late Antique 'decline', analyse habits of material reuse and curation, and look at new Christian and Jewish roles for Roman things as well as polytheist visual survival. Foreign allies and enemies interacted with Greco-Roman Late Antiquity; we visit them too, as in the early Islamic palaces. Media discussed include not just 'monumental' painting, mosaic, sculpture, but also silver, ceramic, ivory, figural textile, glass, painted books, jewelry, coins and more. We look too at Late Antique texts on art, objects, space and viewership. This is an advanced undergraduate lecture course.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 4250
1 Course Unit
CLST 3409 Classical Mythology in the Western Tradition
How and why have artists and viewers, from the Middle Ages to the global present, so often confronted ancient Greek and Roman stories? This undergraduate seminar makes use of local museum collections.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 3250
1 Course Unit
CLST 3410 Arts of the Roman House, Villa, and Palace Seminar
Private and public met in the elite Roman dwelling; this undergraduate seminar looks at the rich record of things and images, in multiple media, and in their spatial contexts, among which Romans chose to live.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 3251
1 Course Unit
CLST 3411 Violence in Ancient Mediterranean Art Seminar
Violence, physical and emotional, pervades the images of the ancient Mediterranean. This undergraduate seminar asks why, how and to what end that occurred; in these and any cultures, why do people look at such images?
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 3252
1 Course Unit
CLST 3412 Narrative in Ancient Art
Cultures of the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean world were fascinated to make images and things tell stories and engage with time. Sometimes that implied a text - and sometimes, not. With case studies from the deep past, this interdisciplinary advanced undergraduate lecture course explores the capacity of visual language to narrate.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 4260, NELC 4055
1 Course Unit
CLST 3413 Hellenistic Art and Spectacle
Hellenistic usually names art in the age of Mediterranean culture from the 4th century BCE and the rise of Alexander the Great's Macedon, and the Greco-Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire, to Cleopatra of Egypt's defeat by Rome at the end of the Republic. Our course looks also at the age of Augustus and his successors, 1st century CE. While Greek and Macedonian practice in city-states and kingdoms is our launching point, this course also looks at international culture and cultural interaction among peoples from North Africa and Etrusco-Roman Italy, Egypt, Anatolia, the Mideast and Central Asia. We probe art, artifacts, and visual display from a range of settings, from sanctuary to house, palace and parade, and in all media, from marble monuments to pottery and jewelry. Our archaeology of Hellenistic visual culture also looks at the rich body of Hellenistic and Roman texts of art history, art criticism, and the description of objects and image, to better understand the Hellenistic maker, patron, and viewer. No prerequisites.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 4280
1 Course Unit
CLST 3415 Roman Architecture and Urbanism
Architecture is the most striking legacy of Rome and the well-preserved remains of Roman buildings dominate our vision of the empire. Although Roman architecture has been studied since the Renaissance, it is only since the middle of the 20th century that it has come to be appreciated for the developments in concrete construction, which led to a revolution in the treatment of interior space and landscape architecture. Indeed, Rome’s architectural revolution radically changed both cities and countryside. Romans developed a wide range of new architectural forms and technological innovations in order to meet the increasingly sophisticated and diverse needs of their society. The purpose of the course is to shed light on Roman architectural and urban projects within their social, political, religious, and physical contexts. Throughout, the emphasis will be on concepts of organizing space, issues of structure, materials, decoration and proportion, the role of architecture in Roman society, and on the varied ways that architecture was employed by individuals and communities to express and enhance their status.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 2290
1 Course Unit
CLST 3416 Classical Myth and the Image
The peoples of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds shared a vast body of stories about human and not-human beings set in a legendary deep past or supernatural present - "Classical myth." Even their neighbor cultures took up those stories (or, sometimes, gave them). The stories as spoken, read, or performed turn up in surviving ancient literature. But from the very point when Greek myth began to be written down, those stories were told with images also. Many arts of the Mediterranean world explored myth at temples and sanctuaries, in civic spaces, theaters, parks, houses and palaces, for tombs and trophies - and even on the body upon weapons, clothes and jewelry. Love and desire and hate, hope and fear and consolation, war and peace, pleasure and excitement, power and salvation, the nature of this world and the cosmos, justice and duty and heroism, fate and free will, suffering and crime: mythological images probed the many domains of being human in order to move the emotions and minds of people (and of gods). Our class samples this story art to ask about its makers and viewers and contexts. What, also, were relations between images and texts and language? What about religious belief vs invention, truth vs fiction? What might it mean to look at this ancient art today, and to represent the old stories in post-ancient cultures? The class introduces ways of thinking about what images and things do; we will read in some relevant literature (drama, epic, novels, etc); and our Penn Museum will be a resource. No prerequisites--no prior knowledge of art history, archaeology, myth or Mediterranean antiquity is assumed.
Also Offered As: ARTH 2269
Mutually Exclusive: AAMW 6269, ARTH 6269, CLST 5416
1 Course Unit
CLST 3502 Greek and Roman Universe
This course covers the history of Greek and Roman exploration and mapping of the earth and the cosmos from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity, together with advances in timekeeping and the measurement of time. Readings include poetic, historical, and scientific texts.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3503 Greek & Roman Medicine
The history of Western medicine is remarkably recent; until the nineteenth century prevailing theories of the body and mind, and many therapeutic methods to combat disease, were largely informed by an elaborate system developed centuries earlier in ancient Greece, at a period when the lines between philosophy, medicine, and what we might consider magic, were much less clearly defined than they are today. This course will examine the ways in which the Greeks, and then the Romans, conceptualized the body, disease, and healing, and will compare these to medical culture of our time. We will consider sources from Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle to Galen and Soranus, and will juxtapose these writings with modern discourse about similar topics. We will also pay some attention to ancient pharmacology and religious healing, and will visit the Penn Museum to see their collection of ancient medical instruments. All readings will be in English and no previous background in Classical Studies is required. This course will be especially appealing (and useful) to Pre-med and Nursing students, and to students interested in the History of Science, Ancient Philosophy, and Classics.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3508 Benjamin Franklin Seminar: History of Literary Criticism
This is a course on the history of literary theory, a survey of major debates about literature, poetics, and ideas about what literary texts should do, from ancient Greece to examples of modern European thought. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: COML 0540, ENGL 0540
1 Course Unit
CLST 3509 Freud's Objects
How do we look at objects? And which stories can objects tell? These are questions that have been asked quite regularly by Art Historians or Museum Curators, but they take a central place within the context of psychoanalytic studies as well. The seminar "Freud's Objects" will offer an introduction to Sigmund Freud's life and times, as well as to psychoanalytic studies. We will focus on objects owned by Freud that he imbued with special significance, and on Freud's writings that focus on specific objects. Finally, we will deal with a re-interpretation of the "object" in psychoanalytic theory, via a discussion of texts by British psychoanalysts such as Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 3560, COML 2052, ENGL 1425, GRMN 1015
1 Course Unit
CLST 3602 Writing History in Greece and Rome
What constituted history in ancient Greece and Rome? What claims to knowledge did history make, and how did these differ from other forms of knowledge? How did historians envision their task, and how did they go about performing it? We will read the works of the major Greek and Roman historians in translation in an attempt to answer those questions. Other issues to consider include the origins and development of historical writing, the place of history within the ancient literary tradition, and the similarities and differences between the ancient and modern practice of history.
Fall or Spring
Also Offered As: ANCH 3602
1 Course Unit
CLST 3603 Reading the Iliad
Homer's Iliad presents a dark and difficult vision of the world, but one that nonetheless inspires. Casual cruelty, divine caprice, and savage violence test heroes and lesser folk and provoke a reckoning with the stark realities of both human vulnerability and capability. It inspires kind of terror, but still also somehow provides a kind of comfort, albeit one whose character seems almost beyond comprehension. By a close and careful reading of Homer's text, along with some reflections and readings drawn from more contemporary wars, including the current ones, we will try to examine these issues with one eye on the past and one on the present. Our goal will be to achieve some further understanding of war and human experience. This course will be offered online.
Summer Term
1 Course Unit
CLST 3604 Ancient Epic Poetry
Admission to this course is by application only. It is a collaboration between Penn and Yale-NUS in Singapore. It will require travel to study in Singapore during Penn's Spring Break 2019. Seminars on both campuses will focus on five complete epics, Gilgamesh, the Iliad, Odyssey, Ramayana, and Aeneid. In addition to regular class times, it will also require additional evening meetings for plenary sessions via teleconference with Singapore. We will work with a mix of lectures, discussions, and group work with teams drawn from both campuses. Yale-NUS will travel to Philadelphia to join Penn students in face-to-face class sessions, and in additional cultural of events, at Penn and in Philadelphia, including work in the Penn Museum. Penn students will also fly over to meet Yale-NUS students for a week that mirrors the Philadelphia experience, with attendance in classes, and cultural events, including the Asian Civilizations Museum. Part of the expectation for the class is that each group will help host the others as they visit. Course grades will consist in a combination of sole-authored papers and collaborative projects. There will be a limited amount of grant money available to subvene travel for students. We will work with financial aid to determine need. Up-to-date passports are required for the course.
1 Course Unit
CLST 3605 The Ancient Novel
The ancient Greek and Roman novels include some of the most enjoyable and interesting literary works from antiquity. Ignored by ancient critics, they were until fairly recently dismissed by classical scholars as mere popular entertainment. But these narratives had an enormous influence on the later development of the novel, and their sophistication and playfulness, they often seem peculiarly modern--or even postmodern. They are also an important source for any understanding of ancient culture or society. In this course, we will discuss the social, religious and philosophical contexts for the ancient novel, and we will think about the relationship of the novel to other ancient genres, such as history and epic. Texts to be read will include Lucian's parodic science fiction story about a journey to the moon; Longus' touching pastoral romance about young love and sexual awakening; Heliodorus' gripping and exotic thriller about pirates and long-lost children; Apuleius' Golden Ass, which contains the story of Cupid and Psyche; and Petronius' Satyricon, a hilarious evocation of an orgiasic Roman banquet.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3606 Africa and Roman Literature
In this course, we will explore race and ethnicity in the Roman world by focusing on the life and works of Roman Africans and the ways in which non-African Romans engaged with and presented the peoples of Africa. The course covers Roman literature in translation from the comedies of Plautus produced in the late 3rd - 2nd centuries BCE, to African Christian writing of the 5th century CE. It also covers a wide range of genres: we will examine how Roman writers articulate questions of race in comedy and satire, epic, history, biography, and elegy among others. We will read African writers (Apuleius, Augustine) and ask how their Africanness influences their works. We will read Roman accounts of journeys to Africa, wars with Africa, and encounters with Africans to ask how the Romans saw themselves as different from or similar to Africans. The course will also explore in more general terms how Romans talk about race: did racism exist? What aspects of different cultures and peoples did Romans choose to emphasize when they talked of non-Romans?
1 Course Unit
CLST 3703 Benjamin Franklin Seminar: Classicism and Literature
This advanced seminar will examine the classical backgrounds to English poetry, in particular the Biblical and Greco-Roman antecedents to Renaissance lyric verse and verse drama (such as, preeminently, Shakespeare). See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ENGL 0500
1 Course Unit
CLST 3704 The Iliad and its Afterlife
As the earliest work in the western tradition, the Iliad has been a constant point of reference for later considerations of heroism, friendship, the search for meaning in the face of mortality, and the effects of war on individuals and societies. We will begin with a close reading of the Iliad in translation, with attention both to the story of its hero Achilles as he experiences disillusionment, frustration, anger, triumph, revenge, and reconciliation and to the poems broader portrait of a society at war, which incorporates the diverse perspectives of invaders and defenders, men and women, old and young, gods and mortals, along with tantalizing glimpses of peacetime life. We will then consider how later writers and artists have drawn on the Iliad to present a range of perspectives of their own -- whether patriotic, mock heroic, romantic, or pacifist -- with particular attention to 20th and 21st century responses by such figures as W.H. Auden, Simone Weil, Cy Twombly, David Malouf, Alice Oswald, and Adrienne Rich. There are no specific prerequisites, but the course can serve as a complement to CLST 302, The Odyssey and its Afterlife or CLST 331 Reading the Iliad in a Time of War.
Also Offered As: COML 3704
1 Course Unit
CLST 3706 Ancient and Modern Constitution Making
Constitutionmaking reemerged as an urgent issue with the transformation of colonial empires after World War II, the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, and nationalist movements in the Balkans, the British Isles, and the European Union. It has remained important as competition for control of Central Asia, the Middle East, and Northern Africa has reintensified. The written constitution has been hailed by some as the vehicle for changing long established cultures, but its success has been uneven when it comes to reducing political conflict and to reforming if not improving customs, character, habits, and actions. What might explain this uneven success? Is an explanation to be found by going back to what appear to be the roots of constitutionmaking? This course builds on contemporary scholarship to reconstruct what we may call the constitutionmaking tradition as it develops in the main ancient texts, which are read in English translation. The course traces this tradition through the classically trained thinkers of the Seventeenth Century, the American colonial compacts and covenants, the so-called state constitutions, and the debates in the U.S. Constitutional Convention up to recent efforts in, for example, Zimbabwe (2013) or Egypt (2014).
Fall or Spring
1 Course Unit
CLST 3707 Classics & American Government
Before the universities established public-service programs in the twentieth century, many Americans prepared themselves for public life by studying Greek and Latin authors in school and college. In this course, using English translations, students survey an eighteenth-century classical curriculum and trace its influence in the political activity of Madison and others who guided the development of American governmental institutions.
Fall
1 Course Unit
CLST 3708 Topics In Classicism and Literature: Epic Tradition
This advanced seminar will examine the classical backgrounds of western medieval literature, in particular the reception of classical myth and epic in the literature of the Middle Ages. Different versions of the course will have different emphases on Greek or Latin backgrounds and on medieval literary genres. Major authors to be covered include Virgil, Ovid, Chaucer, and the Gawain-poet.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: COML 2000, ENGL 2000, GSWS 2000
1 Course Unit
CLST 3710 Imagining Ancient Egypt: A History of Popular Fascination from Antiquity to the Present
Thousands of years after the pyramids were built and the last hieroglyphs were written, ancient Egypt remains a source of mystery and intense interest. Why are we so fascinated with ancient Egypt, and what does that fascination reveal about us? This course explores the reception history of ancient Egypt: how people in various periods and areas of the world have thought about ancient Egypt, what it has meant to them, why they were interested in it, and how they brought the ancient Egyptian past into the present. We will focus not on ancient Egypt itself, but on the history of perceptions of, ideas about, and interactions with ancient Egyptian culture. Our investigation will include how Egyptians of later periods thought about their ancient past, as well as European and American representations (and appropriations) of ancient Egypt. A major focus of the course will be the impact of political and cultural relations between Egypt and the West on perceptions and uses of ancient Egyptian culture. This interdisciplinary course will combine multiple areas of history—intellectual, cultural, and political—and multiple types of sources, including historical writing, literature, film, and opera. Beginning with ancient Greek and Roman visitors to Egypt, we will investigate changing modes of understanding, constructing, and representing ancient Egypt, from the medieval sultans of Egypt to Mozart to W. E. B. DuBois to protesters in Egypt’s 2011 revolution. Over the course of the semester, we will explore questions such as: - What does it mean to think of Egypt as African vs. Middle Eastern vs. Mediterranean? Is Egypt Western, Eastern, both, or neither? - To whom does ancient Egyptian heritage belong? How do colonialism and conceptions of race and ethnicity factor into this question? - How do the past and the present shape each other? What is the impact of modern politics and culture on perceptions of the past? What role does the past play in the formation of modern political, social, and cultural identities? - How can we learn about modern problems and concerns from representations of the past?
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: NELC 2102
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 5710, NELC 5101
1 Course Unit
CLST 3802 Literary Translation
This course is for graduate students and undergraduates with permission of the instructor. All students enrolled must have knowledge of at least one language other than English. We will study the history, theory and practice of literary translation, and participate in it. Readings will include theoretical works in translation studies, using selections from Lawrence Venuti's Translation Studies Reader and Schulte/Biguenet's Translation Theory Reader, with some supplemental readings; we will also look at comparative cases of multiple translations of the same original, and analyze how different translators make different interpretative/formal/aesthetic choices. Course assignments will include both a research paper, on the history and/or theory of translation, and an extended practical translation exercise, to be workshopped over the course of the semester, consisting of a literary translation of a text of the student's choice.
Also Offered As: COML 3802
1 Course Unit
CLST 3803 Curiosity: Ancient and Modern Thinking about Thinking
This course will examine two approaches to the still unanswered question of what happens when we humans come up with new knowledge. How should we describe the impulse, or set of impulses, that leads us to seek it? What is happening when we achieve it? And how do we describe the new state in which we find ourselves after we have it? We will study the work of contemporary physicists and cognitive scientists on these questions along side the approaches developed by the two most powerful thinkers from antiquity on the topic, Plato and Aristotle.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: EAS 2440, INTG 3440
1 Course Unit
CLST 3804 Ancient Dialogue Workshop
This course will focus on the history of dialogue as a method of creative social communication in ancient Greek and Roman cities. We will study ancient dialogue-forms of different kinds, surveying key moments in poetry, drama, philosophy, from Homer onward, as well as imagined dialogues between moderns and ancients. The course will operate as a research workshop, proceeding through a series of case-studies in which participants analyze and critique ancient dialogues and also develop their own dialogue models. The capstone assignment for each participant will be to propose a way to present an ancient dialogue in an innovative form that facilitates productive dialogue in modern culture, and to test it out. In addition to the main instructor, the course will host a series of three visiting speakers - experts in and/or practitioners of the main models of dialogue explored in the course. This course has no pre-requisites and is open to all undergraduates. It fulfills requirements for the major in Classical Studies and for the SNF Paideia program.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3805 Classical Studies in Philadelphia Schools
This course will focus on classical studies as a school resource, with a focus on present-day schools in the Philadelphia area. Our readings and discussions will focus on historical investigation, educational theory, and project-design. The course invites Penn undergraduates and graduate students to rethink how the field traditionally known as "classics" or "classical studies" (both in general and in specific sub-areas such as Latin language, ancient history, mythology, literature, etc.) is presented to school audiences and how classical studies itself must change to meet present social-justice concerns, with special attention given to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is an Academically Based Community-Service Course (ABCS), in which students will be required to consult with one or more local school personnel (teachers and/or students) as part of the coursework. The main assignments will be several short papers and presentations and a longer paper or curriculum-development project. Undergraduates should register for CLST 204, graduate students for CLST 504.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 3999 Independent Study
Coursework and/or research undertaken independently by the student, at a level equivalent to other 3000-level (introductory) courses, supervised by a faculty member.
Fall or Spring
1 Course Unit
CLST 5105 Etruscan Art & Archaeology in the Penn Museum
The Etruscans, who spoke a language unlike any others known, were cast by their Greek and Roman rivals as outsiders and enemies: pirates, lovers of luxury, loose women. Today we must rely on the archaeological evidence of painted tombs, decorated Tuscan temples and massive engineering works to correct the picture. The course will survey a millennium (1st millennium BCE) of Etruscan culture through archaeological sites, works of art and everyday material culture, especially illustrated with objects in the collection of the Penn Museum. An additional insight into Italic culture comes from tomb groups excavated for the Museum at the Faliscan settlement of Narce. Students will gain familiarity with the societies of pre-Roman Italy through close study of their vases, jewels, arms, armor, textiles and tools, and even their very bones, and discover a surprising amount of Etruscan heritage surviving today.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 6300
1 Course Unit
CLST 5240 Penn Museum Curatorial Seminar: Reconfiguring the Classical World Galleries
The Greek galleries in the Penn Museum were opened in 1994, and the Etruscan and Roman galleries in 2003. The world was very different them, and many of the themes used to frame the artifacts in the galleries are not especially relevant to contemporary students, scholars, and visitors. In this course we will completely reorganize and reinstall the galleries digitally, creating a series of websites that will highlight the new layout and themes. We will work extensively with the Greek Etruscan, and Roman artifacts themselves to reconfigure the galleries, which will highlight the connections between antiquity and the contemporary world, focusing on themes such as armed conflict, trauma, migration, xenophobia, and wealth and poverty.
1 Course Unit
CLST 5303 Living World in Archaeological Science
By focusing on the scientific analysis of archaeological remains, this course will explore life and death in the past. It takes place in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and is team taught in three modules: human skeletal analysis, analysis of animal remains, and analysis of plant remains. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how organic materials provide key information about past environments, human behavior, and cultural change through discussions of topics such as health and disease, inequality, and food.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 5267
Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 2267
1 Course Unit
CLST 5305 Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome
An intensive exploration of Rome's urban topography during the Republican and Imperial periods (6th c. B.C. through 4th c. A.D.) Using archaeological and textual sources, including the Etruscan and Roman collections of the Penn Museum, the goal will be to reconstruct the built environment and decoration of Rome over the course of a millennium. Of interest to students of classics, archaeology, art history, and architecture. Some familiarity with Rome will be a plus, but is not required.
Also Offered As: AAMW 5305, ARTH 5305
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 3305
1 Course Unit
CLST 5310 Kinship and Connectivity in the Roman World
An individual's life course is often reflected, enhanced, and defined by their relations to other individuals. This course will investigate the concept of kinship in the Roman world through textual, visual, and archaeological evidence. We will explore relationships at all levels of society from the imperial family to the slaves and freedmen who were part of larger households, in order to understand how different relationships shaped and structured interactions in Roman society. Together, we will explore the following questions: how were relationships and bonds represented in the ancient world? What structures were in place for families to perpetuate themselves through biological or adoptive means? How could non-Roman citizens create family connections through formal and informal channels? How could relationships be celebrated in life and commemorated in death? We will use written evidence from ancient historians, visual evidence like the Altar of Peace, and archaeological evidence from cemeteries to examine how Roman notions of kinship shaped life and death in different social milieu.
1 Course Unit
CLST 5311 Penn Museum Curatorial Seminar: Reconfiguring the Classical World Galleries
The Greek galleries in the Penn Museum were opened in 1994, and the Etruscan and Roman galleries in 2003. The world was very different them, and many of the themes used to frame the artifacts in the galleries are not especially relevant to contemporary students, scholars, and visitors. In this course we will completely reorganize and reinstall the galleries digitally, creating a series of websites that will highlight the new layout and themes. We will work extensively with the Greek Etruscan, and Roman artifacts themselves to reconfigure the galleries, which will highlight the connections between antiquity and the contemporary world, focusing on themes such as armed conflict, trauma, migration, xenophobia, and wealth and poverty.
Also Offered As: AAMW 5630
1 Course Unit
CLST 5314 Mining Archaeology
In ancient times, materials such as stone and metals were used to produce artifacts including pigments, jewelry, tools, and weapons. This course is designed to introduce students to research on the early exploitation of mineral resources. Which techniques were used to access and process raw materials in antiquity? Which archaeological methods can be used to investigate these features and artifacts? The course will provide worldwide examples through time, ranging from Stone Age flint mining, Iron Age rock salt mining to Medieval silver mining. Ethnographic studies and hands-on activities will contribute to our understanding of mining in archaeology, and artifacts from the Museum's collections will undergo scientific analysis in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials.
Spring
Also Offered As: ANTH 5219
Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 3219
1 Course Unit
CLST 5315 The Past Preserved: Conservation In Archaeology
This course explores the scientific conservation of cultural materials from archaeological contexts. It is intended to familiarize students with the basics of artifact conservation but is not intended to train them as conservators. The course will cover how various materials interact with their deposit environments; general techniques for on-site conservation triage and retrieval of delicate materials; what factors need to be considered in planning for artifact conservation; and related topics. Students should expect to gain a thorough understanding of the role of conservation in archaeology and how the two fields interact.
Also Offered As: ANTH 5235
Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 3235
1 Course Unit
CLST 5316 Plants and Society
Interactions between humans and the living landscape around us have played - and continue to play - a fundamental role in shaping our worldview. This course is designed to introduce students to the diverse ways in which humans interact with plants. We will focus on the integration of ethnographic information and archaeological case studies in order to understand the range of interactions between humans and plants, as well as how plants and people have profoundly changed one another. Topics will include the origins of agriculture; cooking and plant processing; human health and the world of ethnomedicine; and poisonous and psychoactive plants. We will examine ancient plant material firsthand at the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will handle botanical ecofacts from the Penn Museum's collections. Students will also carry out a substantial research project focused on an archaeological culture and plant species of their own interest.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 5240
Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 3240
1 Course Unit
CLST 5317 Archaeologies of Subalternity
This course addresses the various areas and approaches to "otherness" in ancient Mediterranean archaeology, and the power dynamics of oppression. We'll not only examine disempowerment around cultural identity, class, gender and sexuality, and race/ethnicity, but we'll spend equal time pondering how those subjects have been studied - or ignored - by classical archaeologists. The power relationships both inherent in the subjugation of various kinds of people in the ancient world, and in the academic discourses around them, are the themes of the course. While this course will be focused on the Bronze Age through late antique Mediterranean, those with other period/interests are most welcome. Students will be asked to bring their own interests to the course, which help shape the course. Upper-level courses in archaeology, anthropology, or ancient history are recommended prior to enrollment.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5500
1 Course Unit
CLST 5318 Landscapes and Seascapes of the Ancient Mediterranean
The Mediterranean environment is both diverse and unique, and nurtured numerous complex societies along its shores in antiquity. This seminar offers a primer on theoretical and methodological approaches to studying landscapes and seascapes of the Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to the early modern era, at scales from local to international and on land and underwater. Concepts from processual, post-processual, and current archaeologies will be considered, and field techniques including excavation and surface survey, remote sensing and geophysics, GIS modeling, and ethnography/ethnoarchaeology are examined. Course content and discussion focus on case studies that illustrate how these tools are used to reconstruct the appearance and resources of the natural environment; overland and maritime routes; settlement location, size, function, and demography; social and economic networks; and agricultural, pastoral, and nomadic lifeways. Seminar participants will develop case studies of their own geographical and chronological interest.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 6130
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 3318
1 Course Unit
CLST 5321 Surface Archaeology
Non-invasive and non-destructive methods make up an ever-greater proportion of archaeological investigations, for both intellectual and practical reasons. These methods comprise collection of data from the surface (pedestrian surface survey, geophysical prospection, geoarchaeology) and from above-ground platforms (drones, aircraft, balloons, kites, satellites), using a variety of sensors from human perception to multispectral scanning devices. The data acquired from these methods complement the contextual information drawn from traditional excavation, but also allow the archaeologist to address diverse research questions at a scale much greater than the excavated site. Aspiring archaeologists should have a good working knowledge of surface archaeological methods. In this course, we will delve deeply into these methods, and read and analyze case studies to expose strengths and weaknesses and to identify best practices. Students will have the opportunity for hands-on training in the Philadelphia area or elsewhere.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5239, ANTH 5231
1 Course Unit
CLST 5401 Greek Art and Artifact
This lecture course surveys Greek art and artifacts from Sicily to the Black Sea from the 10th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE, including the age of Alexander and the Hellenistic Kingdoms. Public sculpture and painting on and around grand buildings and gardens, domestic luxury arts of jewelry, cups and vases, mosaic floors, and cult artefacts are discussed. Also considered are the ways in which heroic epic, religious and political themes are used to engaged viewers' emotions and served both domestic and the public aims. We discuss the relationships of images and things to space and structure, along with ideas of invention and progress, and the role of monuments, makers and patrons in Greek society.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 6250, ARTH 6250
1 Course Unit
CLST 5402 Hellenistic and Roman Art and Artifact
This lecture course surveys the political, religious and domestic arts, patronage and display in Rome's Mediterranean, from the 2nd c. BCE to Constantine's 4th-c. Christianized empire. Our subjects are images and decorated objects in their cultural, political and socio-economic contexts (painting, mosaic, sculpture, luxury and mass-produced arts in many media). We start with the Hellenistic cosmopolitan culture of the Greek kingdoms and their neighbors, and late Etruscan and Republican Italy; next we map Imperial Roman art as developed around the capital city Rome, as well as in the provinces of the vast empire.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 6260, ARTH 6260
1 Course Unit
CLST 5405 Roman Sculpture
Survey of the Republican origins and Imperial development of Roman sculpture - free-standing, relief, and architectural - from ca. 150 BC to 350 AD. We concentrate on sculpture in the capital city and on court and state arts, emphasizing commemorative public sculpture and Roman habits of decorative display; genres examined include relief, portraits, sarcophagi, luxury and minor arts(gems, metalwork, coinage). We evaluate the choice and evolution of styles with reference to the functions of sculptural representation in Roman culture and society.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 6427, ARTH 6427
1 Course Unit
CLST 5406 Late Antique Arts
What is 'Late Antiquity'? In 312 when Roman emperor Constantine inaugurated a Christian empire, 'Roman' culture was centuries old. The period ca. 200-650 CE saw profound transformations that launched Medieval, Byzantine and Islamic traditions. In this epoch of upheaval destruction was frequent but partial: Rome long survived, Constantine's 'new Rome,' Constantinople flourished, and around the Empire both proto-global visual culture and local forms prospered. Roman cultural models authorized both innovation and passion for tradition: we critique art-historical models for Late Antique 'decline', analyse habits of material reuse and curation, and look at new Christian and Jewish roles for Roman things as well as polytheist visual survival. Foreign allies and enemies interacted with Greco-Roman Late Antiquity; we visit them too, as in the early Islamic palaces. Media discussed include not just 'monumental' painting, mosaic, sculpture, but also silver, ceramic, ivory, figural textile, glass, painted books, jewelry, coins and more. We look too at Late Antique texts on art, objects, space and viewership. This is an advanced undergraduate lecture course.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 6425, ARTH 6425
1 Course Unit
CLST 5412 Narrative in Ancient Art
Art history, and its cousins in religious, social, political and literary studies, have long been fascinated with the question of narrative: how do images engage time, tell stories? These are fundamental questions for ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian and Mediterranean art history and archaeology, whose rich corpus of narrative images is rarely considered in the context of "Western" art. Relations between words and things, texts and images, were as fundamental to the ancient cultures we examine as they are to modern studies. As we weigh classic modern descriptions of narrative and narratology, we will bring to bear recent debates about how (ancient) images, things, monuments, and designed spaces engage with time, space, and event, and interact with cultural memory. We will ask "who is the story for, and why?" for public and private narratives ranging from political histories to mythological encounters. Our case studies will be drawn from the instructors' expertise in Mesopotamian visual culture, and in the visual cultures of the larger Mediterranean world from early Greek antiquity to the Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique periods. One central and comparative question, for instance, is the nature of recording history in pictures and texts in the imperial projects of Assyria, Achaemenid Persia, the Hellenistic kingdoms, and Rome.
Also Offered As: AAMW 5230, ARTH 5230
1 Course Unit
CLST 5413 Hellenistic Art and Spectacle
Hellenistic usually names art in the age of Mediterranean culture from the 4th century BCE and the rise of Alexander the Great's Macedon, and the Greco-Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire, to Cleopatra of Egypt's defeat by Rome at the end of the Republic. Our course looks also at the age of Augustus and his successors, 1st century CE. While Greek and Macedonian practice in city-states and kingdoms is our launching point, this course also looks at international culture and cultural interaction among peoples from North Africa and Etrusco-Roman Italy, Egypt, Anatolia, the Mideast and Central Asia. We probe art, artifacts, and visual display from a range of settings, from sanctuary to house, palace and parade, and in all media, from marble monuments to pottery and jewelry. Our archaeology of Hellenistic visual culture also looks at the rich body of Hellenistic and Roman texts of art history, art criticism, and the description of objects and image, to better understand the Hellenistic maker, patron, and viewer. No prerequisites.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 6428, ARTH 6428
1 Course Unit
CLST 5416 Classical Myth and the Image
The peoples of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds shared a vast body of stories about human and not-human beings set in a legendary deep past or supernatural present - "Classical myth." Even their neighbor cultures took up those stories (or, sometimes, gave them). The stories as spoken, read, or performed turn up in surviving ancient literature. But from the very point when Greek myth began to be written down, those stories were told with images also. Many arts of the Mediterranean world explored myth at temples and sanctuaries, in civic spaces, theaters, parks, houses and palaces, for tombs and trophies - and even on the body upon weapons, clothes and jewelry. Love and desire and hate, hope and fear and consolation, war and peace, pleasure and excitement, power and salvation, the nature of this world and the cosmos, justice and duty and heroism, fate and free will, suffering and crime: mythological images probed the many domains of being human in order to move the emotions and minds of people (and of gods). Our class samples this story art to ask about its makers and viewers and contexts. What, also, were relations between images and texts and language? What about religious belief vs invention, truth vs fiction? What might it mean to look at this ancient art today, and to represent the old stories in post-ancient cultures? The class introduces ways of thinking about what images and things do; we will read in some relevant literature (drama, epic, novels, etc); and our Penn Museum will be a resource. No prerequisites--no prior knowledge of art history, archaeology, myth or Mediterranean antiquity is assumed.
Also Offered As: AAMW 6269, ARTH 6269
Mutually Exclusive: ARTH 2269, CLST 3416
1 Course Unit
CLST 5620 Intro to Digital Archaeology
Students in this course will be exposed to the broad spectrum of digital approaches in archaeology with an emphasis on fieldwork, through a survey of current literature and applied learning opportunities that focus on African American mortuary landscapes of greater Philadelphia. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, we will work with stakeholders from cemetery companies, historic preservation advocacy groups, and members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to collect data from three field sites. We will then use these data to reconstruct the original plans, untangle site taphonomy, and assess our results for each site. Our results will be examined within the broader constellation of threatened and lost African American burial grounds and our interpretations will be shared with community stakeholders using digital storytelling techniques. This course can count toward the minor in Digital Humanities, minor in Archaeological Science and the Graduate Certificate in Archaeological Science.
Also Offered As: AAMW 5620, ANTH 5220
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 3307
1 Course Unit
CLST 5710 Imagining Ancient Egypt: A History of Popular Fascination from Antiquity to the Present
Thousands of years after the pyramids were built and the last hieroglyphs were written, ancient Egypt remains a source of mystery and intense interest. Why are we so fascinated with ancient Egypt, and what does that fascination reveal about us? This course explores the reception history of ancient Egypt: how people in various periods and areas of the world have thought about ancient Egypt, what it has meant to them, why they were interested in it, and how they brought the ancient Egyptian past into the present. We will focus not on ancient Egypt itself, but on the history of perceptions of, ideas about, and interactions with ancient Egyptian culture. Our investigation will include how Egyptians of later periods thought about their ancient past, as well as European and American representations (and appropriations) of ancient Egypt. A major focus of the course will be the impact of political and cultural relations between Egypt and the West on perceptions and uses of ancient Egyptian culture. This interdisciplinary course will combine multiple areas of history—intellectual, cultural, and political—and multiple types of sources, including historical writing, literature, film, and opera. Beginning with ancient Greek and Roman visitors to Egypt, we will investigate changing modes of understanding, constructing, and representing ancient Egypt, from the medieval sultans of Egypt to Mozart to W. E. B. DuBois to protesters in Egypt’s 2011 revolution. Over the course of the semester, we will explore questions such as: - What does it mean to think of Egypt as African vs. Middle Eastern vs. Mediterranean? Is Egypt Western, Eastern, both, or neither? - To whom does ancient Egyptian heritage belong? How do colonialism and conceptions of race and ethnicity factor into this question? - How do the past and the present shape each other? What is the impact of modern politics and culture on perceptions of the past? What role does the past play in the formation of modern political, social, and cultural identities? - How can we learn about modern problems and concerns from representations of the past?
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: NELC 5101
Mutually Exclusive: NELC 2102
1 Course Unit
CLST 5800 MLA Proseminar: Reading the Iliad in an Age of War
Homer's Iliad presents a dark and difficult vision of the world, but one that nonetheless inspires. Casual cruelty, divine caprice, and savage violence test heroes and lesser folk and provoke a reckoning with the stark realities of both human vulnerability and capability. It inspires kind of terror, but still also somehow provides a kind of comfort, albeit one whose character seems almost beyond comprehension. By a close and careful reading of Homer's text, along with some reflections and readings drawn from more contemporary wars, including the current ones, we will try to examine these issues with one eye on the past and one on the present. Our goal will be to achieve some further understanding of war and human experience. This course will be offered online.
Summer Term
1 Course Unit
CLST 5805 Classical Studies in Philadelphia Schools
This course will focus on classical studies as a school resource, with a focus on present-day schools in the Philadelphia area. Our readings and discussions will focus on historical investigation, educational theory, and project-design. The course invites Penn undergraduates and graduate students to rethink how the field traditionally known as "classics" or "classical studies" (both in general and in specific sub-areas such as Latin language, ancient history, mythology, literature, etc.) is presented to school audiences and how classical studies itself must change to meet present social-justice concerns, with special attention given to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is an Academically Based Community-Service Course (ABCS), in which students will be required to consult with one or more local school personnel (teachers and/or students) as part of the coursework. The main assignments will be several short papers and presentations and a longer paper or curriculum-development project. Undergraduates should register for CLST 204, graduate students for CLST 504.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 5901 Post-Baccalaureate Studies in Greek
Intensive Greek reading course for students in the Post-Baccalaureate Program in Classical Studies. Readings are chosen to expose students to a variety of prose and poetry texts during their program experience. The Fall course includes some grammar review and analysis as well as translation. Permission of instructor required for non-Post-Baccalaureate students.
Two Term Class, Student may enter either term; credit given for either
1 Course Unit
CLST 5902 Post-Baccalaureate Studies in Latin
Intensive Latin reading course for students in the Post-Baccalaureate Program in Classical Studies. Readings are chosen to expose students to a variety of prose and poetry texts during their program experience. The Fall course includes some grammar review and analysis as well as translation. Permission of instructor required for non-Post-Baccalaureate students.
Two Term Class, Student may enter either term; credit given for either
1 Course Unit
CLST 6000 Materials and Methods: Proseminar in Classical Studies and Ancient History
This is the required proseminar for first-year graduate students in Classical Studies and Ancient History. It offers an up-to-date orientation to the professional academic fields conventionally known as classical studies and ancient history. The course is responsive to present debates within, and about, these fields.
Fall
1 Course Unit
CLST 6230 The (Mostly) Latin Epigram
In this seminar we will explore the themes and aesthetics of the Latin epigram, a genre (or is it?) best known for its brevity and wit but one whose precise nature is tantalizingly elusive. After orienting ourselves in the epigrams of Hellenistic Greek epigrammatists and late Republican authors like the so-called Neoterics (Catullus, Cinna, Calvus, Caesar), we will turn our attention to the poetry of Martial, whose accounts of Rome, its inhabitants, and their foibles exerted a profound influence on subsequent epigrammatists. Among the themes we will engage are: epigram as a genre; persona in tessellated textual collections; the interaction of refined and obscene language; and the artistic and intellectual implications of replication, anthology, and remix.
1 Course Unit
CLST 6300 Material & Methods in Mediterranean Archaeology
This course is intended to provide an introduction to archaeological methods and theory in a Mediterranean context, focusing on the contemporary landscape. The class will cover work with museum collections (focusing on the holdings of the Penn Museum), field work and laboratory analysis in order to give students a diverse toolkit that they can later employ in their own original research. Each week, invited lecturers will address the class on different aspects of archaeological methodology in their own research, emphasizing specific themes that will be highlighted in readings and subsequent discussion. The course is divided into three sections: Method and Theory in Mediterranean Archaeology; Museum collections; and Decolonizing Mediterranean Archaeology. The course is designed for new AAMW graduate students, though other graduate students or advanced undergraduate students may participate with the permission of the instructor.
Fall
Also Offered As: AAMW 5260, ANTH 5026
1 Course Unit
CLST 6699 Graduate Reading Group in Greek and/or Latin
A student-selected course of reading proposed by two or more students, focusing on Greek and/or Latin texts and selected key topics in literary history. In forming the group, students are encouraged, where feasible, to recruit one or more advanced students to consult on an author or genre on which they are working, either as a regular or occasional group member, or as a visitor to one group meeting. Proposal and outcome subject to approval by graduate chair. Graded S / U.
1 Course Unit
CLST 7000 Graduate Seminar
Topics will vary
Fall or Spring
1 Course Unit
CLST 7102 The Flavian Era
The time of the Flavians (69-96 BCE) holds a special place in Roman history and culture as it marks the transition from the Julio-Claudian period to the High Empire. Historically, the rule of Rome's second dynasty saw a stabilization of the imperial power system, the consolidation of social and political hierarchies, and an increasing integration of the empire. Major construction projects reshaped the city of Rome, topographically and ideologically. The literary production in various genres reached a new peak, developed new forms, and explored new topics. The unusually high number of Greek and Latin texts and documents preserved allow us to analyze such changes closely; our focus will be on the interrelation and conjunction of these developments. Final projects will take the form of papers suitable for presentation at the SCS Annual Meeting.
1 Course Unit
CLST 7200 Roman Humor and Invective
This seminar will explore Roman humor in epigram, iambic, oratory, and satire as a method of constructing and policing norms of sexuality, the body, and social identity. We will read from a wide range of authors including Catullus, Martial, Cicero, Quintilian, Petronius, and Juvenal, as well as texts that discuss or depict laughter and ridicule. Beyond focused analysis of the works at hand, we will evaluate modern theories of humor and laughter according to the ancient evidence and develop models for understanding Roman humor. In addition to weekly readings, students will be responsible for class presentations, contributing to works-in-progress workshops, and a final research paper.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: LATN 7203
1 Course Unit
CLST 7203 Ancient Economies
Scholars have long debated the nature of the ancient economy, the terms in which it can best be approached, and the decision-making processes that underpinned economic behavior in antiquity. In particular, controversy has surrounded the extent to which the economies of Greco-Roman antiquity can be modeled using contemporary tools of analysis. In recent scholarship, many of the tenets laid down by Moses Finley in his The Ancient Economy have been re-evaluated, with the result that the field is currently in a state of intellectual ferment. It is the purpose of this course to explore the terms in which contemporary debates over ancient economic systems are formulated, with reference to a variety of societies and periods, from the palace economies of the Mycenaean period to the system of taxation introduced in the early fourth century by the emperor Diocletian and his colleagues in the Tetrarchy.
Fall or Spring
Also Offered As: ANCH 7203
1 Course Unit
CLST 7208 Biographical Approaches to Antiquity
Biographical approaches, long used and despised as a genre reducing history to the actions of a few protagonists, have gained prominence again in recent scholarship. Instead of focusing the historical analysis on the usual suspects (from emperors to canonical authors), more recent applications of biographical approaches have deliberately decentered the narrative, employed the perspective of those whose position has been marginalized, and revealed influences and patterns that otherwise would remain unnoticed. This course will explore the potential, variations, and pitfalls of approaches that focus on individuals, from biographies that follow a traditional format yet have shaped the field of ancient studies to microhistory and prosopographical studies. Using examples from the late Hellenistic to the High Imperial Period, we will discuss methodologies to reconstruct an individual life despite the general scarcity of sources, how such an approach can transform our understanding of the respective cultural, political, and social circumstances, and what insights into the broader historical processes such a focus offers or obscures. Graduate-level Latin and Greek required as pre-requisite for course.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 7208
1 Course Unit
CLST 7303 Archaeology of Troy
An introduction to the archaeology of Troy, in northwestern Turkey. The course will focus on the results of excavations at the site in 1988, although the earlier excavations of Schliemann, Dorpfeld, and Blegen will also be considered. The course will cover a broad chronological span--from the early Bronze age through the late Roman period, and will include Greek, Roman, and Medieval attitudes toward Troy and the Trojan legend.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 7304 The Archaeology of Greece and Asia Minor in the Archaic and Classical Periods
An examination of new discoveries and conflicting interpretations in the archaeology of Greece and Asia Minor between the seventh and fourth centuries B.C.E. Both sides of the Aegean will receive equal attention, and emphasis will be placed on sanctuaries, settlements, and cemeteries.
Also Offered As: AAMW 7260
1 Course Unit
CLST 7305 Topics in Aegean Archaeology
Topics vary. This course explores current topics in Aegean archaeology. It is designed to inform and prompt debate and discussion on substantive, methodological, and theoretical matters of current interest, within a geographical and/or chronological framework. Spring 2017 topic TBA.
1 Course Unit
CLST 7306 Archaeology of the Hellenistic Period in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor
A survey of the archaeology of the Hellenistic period (331-31 BCE) across the Mediterranean, with a focus on Rome, Magna Graecia, Greece, and western Asia Minor. The course will stress the interactions among cities and kingdoms during the Roman Republic and Greek Hellenistic periods, especially the second century B.C. Students will work with relevant objects in the Penn Museums Mediterranean Section.
1 Course Unit
CLST 7307 Ethnoarchaeology Greece
Ethnoarchaeology involves distinctive theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of living societies for the explicit purpose of shedding light on archaeological questions. In this seminar, we will review the intellectual history of ethnoarchaeology in North America and Europe, and explore case studies from Greece, the wider Mediterranean, and beyond. Among the topics will be analogy, cross-cultural comparison, experimental archaeology, oral history research, and archaeologically oriented ethnographic fieldwork. Students will create a proposal for ethnoarchaeological fieldwork in their area of interest in NSF or Wenner-Gren format, to be critiqued by the instructor and their peers.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 7050
1 Course Unit
CLST 7308 Geoarchaeology
In this course, students will learn the basic concepts of earth systems and explore the ways that archaeologists use various environmental sciences (e.g., geomorphology, limnology, palynology, and dendroclimatology) and paleoecological modeling in their research. The course will include lectures and laboratory activities on the basics of geology, including surficial geology, rock and mineral identification, geomorphology and soils, sedimentation and stratigraphy, as well as a systematic review of depositional environments and their archaeological potential. A series of archaeological case studies will illustrate the application of these concepts in real-world field archaeology.
1 Course Unit
CLST 7310 Ancient Greek Colonies
This seminar examines the archaeology of Greek colonization from the Late Bronze Age to ca. 500 B.C. These colonies were highly diverse in their motivations, physical settings, and political and social structures, as well as in their relationships with mother cities and the new worlds they inhabited. Emphasis is placed on the colonial experience as a cross-cultural and negotiated process; several streams of the changing theoretical and conceptual approaches to Greek colonization are explored. In addition to archaeological and epigraphic evidence, literary and historical traditions are examined. Colonies from the southern Balkan peninsula, Black Sea, Ionia, northern Africa, and Magna Graecia will be the focus of reading and reports. Seminar meetings will consist of oral reports and discussion of these reports and other topics. Depending on the number of participants, each person will be responsible for two or three reports of approximately 30-45 minutes length. Accompanying the oral report will be a PowerPoint document (in most cases), a synopsis/summary of one to two pages, and a bibliography. These will all be posted on the course Canvas site. No later than one week before an oral presentation, the presenter will identify one or two key readings for all to read, in consultation with the instructor. These will be posted, in PDF format, on the Canvas site. One or more visits to the Penn Museum may be built into the course.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5190, ANCH 7310
1 Course Unit
CLST 7311 Petrography of Cultural Materials
Introduction to thin-section petrography of stone and ceramic archaeological materials. Using polarized light microscopy, the first half of this course will cover the basics of mineralogy and the petrography of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. The second half will focus on the petrographic description of ceramic materials, mainly pottery, with emphasis on the interpretation of provenance and technology. As part of this course, students will characterize and analyze archaeological samples from various collections. Prior knowledge of geology is not required.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5120, ANTH 5211
1 Course Unit
CLST 7313 Archaeobotany Seminar
In this course we will approach the relationship between plants and people from archaeological and anthropological perspectives in order to investigate diverse plant consumption, use, and management strategies. Topics will include: archaeological formation processes, archaeobotanical sampling and recovery, lab sorting and identification, quantification methods, and archaeobotany as a means of preserving cultural heritage. Students will learn both field procedures and laboratory methods of archaeobotany through a series of hands-on activities and lab-based experiments. The final research project will involve an original in-depth analysis and interpretation of archaeobotanical specimens. By the end of the course, students will feel comfortable reading and evaluating archaeobotanical literature and will have a solid understanding of how archaeobotanists interpret human activities of the past.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5390, ANTH 5230, NELC 6930
1 Course Unit
CLST 7315 Geophysical Prospection for Archaeology
Near-surface geophysical prospection methods are now widely used in archaeology as they allow archaeologists to rapidly map broad areas, minimize or avoid destructive excavation, and perceive physical dimensions of archaeological features that are outside of the range of human perception. This course will cover the theory of geophysical sensors commonly used in archaeological investigations and the methods for collecting, processing, and interpreting geophysical data from archaeological contexts. We will review the physical properties of common archaeological and paleoenvironmental targets, the processes that led to their deposition and formation, and how human activity is reflected in anomalies recorded through geophysical survey through lectures, readings, and discussion. Students will gain experience collecting data in the field with various sensors at archaeological sites in the region. A large proportion of the course will be computer-based as students work with data from geophysical sensors, focusing on the fundamentals of data processing, data fusion, and interpretation. Some familiarity with GIS is recommended.
Spring, odd numbered years only
Also Offered As: AAMW 5720, ANTH 5720, NELC 5925
1 Course Unit
CLST 7317 Ruins and Reconstruction
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.
Also Offered As: ANTH 5805, HSPV 5850, NELC 5950
1 Course Unit
CLST 7400 Myth Through Time and In Time
The textual and physical remains of Greek and Roman culture and belief as 'myth' entranced the post-antique European world and its neighbors. Makers, patrons and viewers manipulated those survivals to challenge and speak to a contemporary world. This course focuses on how and why artists and their patrons engaged the mythic and examines the various areas of political and religious life that sought animation through an evocation of narratives from the past. Readings and case studies will engage with very late antique, medieval, and early modern art, turning to the modern and contemporary as well. Moving to the modern lets us examine, among other things, how artists address the exclusionary histories of the past, to enable critiques of myths of supremacy by one gender, race, or culture over others.
Also Offered As: AAMW 5590, ARTH 5590, COML 5590, GRMN 5590
1 Course Unit
CLST 7403 Borderlines: Art and Artifact in the Roman Empire
What made art and artifacts `Roman', or not, in a Roman world? `Roman provincial art` is an active scholarly category. This seminar reframes it, to test productive models to understand visual culture outside the empire’s Italian heartland from the Late Republic into Late Antiquity, in the Roman polity’s interactions with many peoples in situations of diaspora, colonization, hegemony, conflict, economic exchange, and religious interaction. As `Rome’ expanded, cultural relations across many borderlines – social, ethnic, territorial - potentially became cultural politics. A traditional topic for that has been Roman interaction with Greek culture. This seminar extends that range, while tackling `Hellenization’, as we reflect on models of `Romanization’, globalism and identity formation within the imperium’s boundaries in its provinces and client kingdoms, and also at its frontier zones. Various disciplines apply: art history, archaeology, history, and more. Case studies, evolved with students, may range from Britain to Iran, northern Africa to the Black Sea in space and, in time, from interactions with the Hellenistic East and West and with Iron Age Europe, to the age of Germanic, Sasanian and Ummayad conquests of Roman terrain, ca 3rd c. BCE-7th c. CE. The market in art and artifact, the nature and status of makers, and conditions of patronage and viewing are key considerations. Private and public objects, images, architecture and urbanism, and landscapes can all concern us, as we try out disciplinary approaches that take in eg cultural appropriation, translation and hybrity, creolization, discrepant experience, object agency, and communities of taste and style. `Ethnicity’ is a loaded concept in ancient Mediterranean studies, as is `race;’ our course must engage those, and the ways in which things and styles have been made to serve those terms. And who owns, is heir to, the cultural legacies we look at, and how to name them, are problems that tangle with current national identity formation, and academic and museum practice. Our own Museum's holdings can make topics. Students are welcome to bring in interests in language and text cultures, in disciplines outside art history and archaeology, and in other world cultures and epochs.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5250, ANCH 7403, ARTH 5250
1 Course Unit
CLST 7404 Roman Political Art Seminar
This seminar looks at how Roman things, images and the designed environment so often spoke to political and sociological realities. The material world was not just a document of history: it was history. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5251, ARTH 5251
1 Course Unit
CLST 7405 Late Antique Art and Artifact Seminar
What is 'Late Antiquity'? In 312 when Roman emperor Constantine inaugurated a Christian empire, 'Roman' culture was centuries old. The period ca. 200-650 CE saw profound transformations that launched Medieval, Byzantine and Islamic traditions. In this epoch of upheaval destruction was frequent but partial: Rome long survived, Constantine's 'new Rome,' Constantinople flourished, and around the Empire both proto-global visual culture and local forms prospered. Roman cultural models authorized both innovation and passion for tradition: we critique art-historical models for Late Antique 'decline', analyse habits of material reuse and curation, and look at new Christian and Jewish roles for Roman things as well as polytheist visual survival. Foreign allies and enemies interacted with Greco-Roman Late Antiquity; we visit them too, as in the early Islamic palaces. Media discussed include not just 'monumental' painting, mosaic, sculpture, but also silver, ceramic, ivory, figural textile, glass, painted books, jewelry, coins and more. We look too at Late Antique texts on art, objects, space and viewership. This seminar is open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5252, ARTH 5252
1 Course Unit
CLST 7406 Violence in Ancient Mediterranean Art Seminar
Violence, physical and emotional, pervades the images of the ancient Mediterranean. This seminar asks why, how and to what end that occurred; in these and any cultures, why do people look at such images? Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5253, ARTH 5253
1 Course Unit
CLST 7407 Myth Through Time and in Time Seminar
The textual and physical remains of Greek and Roman culture and belief as 'myth' entranced the post-antique European world and its neighbors. Makers, patrons and viewers manipulated those survivals to challenge and speak to a contemporary world. This course focuses on how and why artists and their patrons engaged the mythic and examines the various areas of political and religious life that sought animation through an evocation of narratives from the past. Readings and case studies will examine very late antique through medieval and early modern art. This seminar is open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 5254, ARTH 5254, ITAL 5254
1 Course Unit
CLST 7408 Narrative in Ancient Art
Cultures of the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean world were fascinated to make images and things tell stories and engage with time. Sometimes that implied a text - and sometimes, not. With case studies from the deep past, this interdisciplinary advanced undergraduate lecture course explores the capacity of visual language to narrate.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AAMW 6426, ARTH 6426
1 Course Unit
CLST 7601 Approaches to Literary Texts
Most seminars focus on literary texts composed during a single historical period; this course is unusual in inviting students to consider the challenges of approaching texts from a range of different historical eras. Taught by a team of literary specialists representing diverse periods and linguistic traditions and conducted as a hands-on workshop, this seminar is designed to help students of literature and related disciplines gain expertise in analysis and interpretation of literary works across the boundaries of time, geography, and language, from classic to modern. Students will approach literature as a historical discipline and learn about key methodological issues and questions that specialists in each period and field ask about texts that their disciplines study. The diachronic and cross-cultural perspectives inform discussions of language and style, text types and genres, notions of alterity, fictionality, literariness, symbolism, intertextuality, materiality, and interfaces with other disciplines. This is a unique opportunity to learn in one course about diverse literary approaches from specialists in different fields.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: COML 6160, EALC 8290, ENGL 6160, REES 6450, ROML 6160
1 Course Unit
CLST 7602 The Worlds of the Latin Novel
This seminar will explore the worlds of Petronius’ Satyrica, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and other works of Latin prose fiction, devoting equal time to literary, historical, and material dimensions. Participants will devise research topics to serve as the focus of presentations and a seminar paper. Latin is not required, but the regular reading assignments will include Latin options, both from ancient novels and from modern novellae (a recent innovation in Latin learning).
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: LATN 7004
1 Course Unit
CLST 7701 Medieval Poetics: Europe and India
This is a comparative course on medieval stylistic practices, formal innovations, and especially theories of form. Our common ground will be the theories that were generated in learned and pedagogical traditions of medieval literary cultures of Europe and pre-modern India (with their roots in ancient thought about poetic form). See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a complete description of the current offerings.
Also Offered As: COML 7210, ENGL 7215
1 Course Unit
CLST 7704 Topics: Renaissance Culture
Please see department website for a current course description at: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/italians/graduate/courses
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: COML 5450, ITAL 5400, PHIL 5150
1 Course Unit
CLST 7708 Black Classicisms
This course will explore heterogeneous responses to ancient Greek and Roman Classics in the literature, art, and political thought of Africa and the Black Diaspora, ranging from the late eighteenth century to the present day and encompassing Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. We will analyze how African and black diasporic writers, artists, and thinkers have engaged with and re-imagined Greco-Roman Classics, both to expose and critique discourses of racism, imperialism, and colonialism, and as a source of radical self-expression. Throughout, we will consider the reciprocal dynamic by which dialogues with ancient Greek and Roman classics contribute to the polyphony of black texts and these same texts write back to and signify on the Greek and Roman Classics, diversifying the horizon of expectation for their future interpretation. Writers and artists whose work we will examine include Romare Bearden; Dionne Brand; Gwendolyn Brooks; Aimé Césaire; Austin Clarke; Anna Julia Cooper; Rita Dove; W.E.B. Du Bois; Ralph Ellison; Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona; C.L.R. James; June Jordan; Toni Morrison; Harryette Mullen; Marlene Nourbese Philip; Ola Rotimi; William Sanders Scarborough; Wole Soyinka; Mary Church Terrell; Derek Walcott; Booker T. Washington; Phillis Wheatley; and Richard Wright. We will study these writers in the context of national and transnational histories and networks and in dialogue with relevant theoretical debates. Work for assessment will include a 15-page research paper and the preparation of a teaching syllabus for a course on an aspect of Black Classical Receptions.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AFRC 7708, COML 7708
1 Course Unit
CLST 7709 Introduction to Paleography & Book History
Writing and reading are common actions we do every day. Nonetheless they have changed over the centuries, and a fourteenth century manuscript appears to us very different from a Penguin book. The impact of cultural movements such as Humanism, and of historical events, such as the Reformation, reshaped the making of books, and therefore the way of reading them. The course will provide students with an introduction to the history of the book, including elements of paleography, and through direct contact with the subjects of the class: manuscripts and books. Furthermore, a section of the course will focus on digital resources, in order to make students familiar with ongoing projects related to the history of book collections (including the "Philosophical Libraries" and the "Provenance" projects, based at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and at Penn). The course will be conducted in English; a basic knowledge of Latin is desirable but not required.
Spring
Also Offered As: COML 5111, ITAL 5110
1 Course Unit
CLST 7710 Topics in Medieval Studies: Premodern Animals (c.500-c.1500)
From St. Cuthbert, whose freezing feet were warmed by otters, to St. Guinefort, a miracle-performing greyhound in 13th-century France, to Melusine, the half-fish, half-woman ancestress of the house of Luxembourg (now the Starbucks logo), medieval narratives are deeply inventive in their portrayal of human-animal interactions. This course introduces students to critical animals studies via medieval literature and culture. We will read a range of genres, from philosophical commentaries on Aristotle and theological commentaries on Noah’s ark to werewolf poems, beast fables, political satires, saints’ lives, chivalric romances, bestiaries, natural encyclopaedias, dietary treatises and travel narratives. Among the many topics we will explore are the following: animals in premodern law; comfort and companion animals; vegetarianism across religious cultures; animal symbolism and human virtue; taxonomies of species in relation to race, gender, and class; literary animals and political subversion; menageries and collecting across medieval Europe, the Near East, and Asia; medieval notions of hybridity, compositeness, trans-species identity, and interspecies relationships; art and the global traffic in animals (e.g., ivory, parchment); European encounters with New World animals; and the legacy of medieval animals in contemporary philosophy and media. No prior knowledge of medieval literature is required. Students from all disciplines are welcome.
Also Offered As: COML 5245, ENGL 5245, RELS 6101
1 Course Unit
CLST 7711 People Out of Place Then and Now
Encounters between hosts and strangers are at the core of some of our oldest surviving narratives through time. The actions and decisions taken over the threshold, whether in welcome or repulsion, serve to position society within a moral framework, and simultaneously re/define the framework itself. Asylum negotiations, by their nature, constitute the ‘host’ through pointing to the existence of bodies positioned external to it. Yet, the appeals for refuge also expose the ambiguity of who the host is. In this course we will seek to understand how value is drawn from persons, whose condition is reduced to being bodies out of place. That is whose physical position means removal from – a place of rights, protection and belonging – whether through expulsion or by being relegated to spaces of constrained mobility – asylum seekers, refugees, exiles, captives and those without effective citizenship. We will draw on ancient, on modern and on imaginary liminal settings to investigate the unique role of people in such states for articulating intra-community relations and the space between civil rights and human rights. Individuals and groups in such positions of liminality – whose state is considered one of exception and characterised by precarity, unsettledness and threat of violence have a significant role in articulating the parameters of the non-exceptional – the so called ‘norm’. Here the perplexities of sovereignty are revealed, not only for the host, but for those citizen-strangers, the stateless or people with non-effective citizenship, whose existence lies seemingly beyond the possibilities of sovereign action, and yet there is the power to invoke it.
1 Course Unit
CLST 7801 Historical Grammar of Greek
Investigation of the grammar of Classical Greek from the viewpoint of historical linguistics. The course will offer historical explanations for numerous structural peculiarities of the Greek language and anomalies of Greek grammar, touch on the relationship of Greek with other languages, and incidentally introduce the student to some basic concepts of language analysis likely to be useful in teaching Greek and learning other languages.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
CLST 8000 Language Pedagogy Workshop
The Workshop is intended to serve as a forum for first-time teachers of Latin or Greek. This will include discussing course-plans and pedagogical theories and strategies, collaborating on course materials, and addressing any concerns in the language courses presently being taught.
1 Course Unit
CLST 8888 Local Project
Participation in, or pursuit of, a community-service or public-facing project or participation in an outreach program. Proposal and outcome subject to approval by graduate chair.
1 Course Unit
CLST 9000 Dissertation Prospectus Workshop
Designed to prepare graduates in any aspect of study in the ancient world to prepare for the dissertation prospectus. Course will be centered around individual presentations and group critique of prospectus' in process, as well the fundamentals of large-project research design and presentation.
Spring
Also Offered As: ANCH 9000
1 Course Unit
CLST 9900 Masters Thesis
This course is taken by Masters students writing a thesis.
Fall or Spring
0 Course Units
CLST 9950 Dissertation
This course is taken by students writing a doctoral dissertation.
Fall or Spring
0 Course Units
CLST 9991 Special Topic
Independent study advised by faculty, usually taken in the third year (earlier only by permission of the graduate chair).
1 Course Unit
CLST 9999 Independent Study
Study devoted to pursuing a specific research topic, reading in a specific subject area or scholarly literature in English and other languages, or preparing a conference paper, publication, or comparable project. Proposal and outcome subject to approval by graduate chair.
Fall or Spring
1 Course Unit