REVISED 12 March 09

 

This is a ‘Summer Session’ course (22 June – 31 July)

 

Prerequisites: 45 units

Course Description:

The humanities have traditionally included the study of history, philosophy, literature and later on, the arts, fields of human study that were developed or defined in the Golden Age of Greece, 5th century BC. Greek philosophers asked questions still debated today; literary studies still refer back to categories elaborated in the fifth century. Our first historiographers were the Greeks who explained the past in terms of human agency rather than myth. Greek art remains for many the ideal expression of creative endeavor. We will read primary sources in these disciplines at the main origin of our cultural traditions and measure the distance we have traveled since, recognizing similarities but also differences in the ways we see the world. We will study and view works of art with the help of slides, video, and film.

 

Required Texts:

·     Aeschylus, The Persians, in Prometheus Bound, 1990-1998 London ; New York : Penguin Books, ISBN: 0140441123 (pbk.)

·     Aristophanes, The Clouds, Lysistrata in The Archanians; 1973, London, Penguin, ISBN: 0140442871

·     Aristotle, Aristotle's Poetics, New York : Norton, ISBN: 0393952169 (pbk).

·     Euripides, The Bacchae, and other plays. 1972, Harmondsworth, Eng., Baltimore, Penguin Books, ISBN: 0140440445

• M.I. Finley, ed., The Portable Greek Historians. Penguin ISBN: 0-14-015065-X.
• Homer, The Odyssey, 2003, London, New-York, Penguin, ISBN ISBN: 0140449116.

·      Plato, The Apology, The Symposium, in Benjamin Jowett, trans, Six Great Dialogues: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, The Republic (Thrift Edition) (Paperback)

• Sophocles, Oedipus Rex in The Theban Plays, 2000, Robert Fagles, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 0140444254

·      Nigel Jonathan Spivey, Greek Art, 1997, London: Phaidon Press; ISBN: 0714833681

• Jean Pierre Vernant, The origins of Greek Thought, 1982, Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, ISBN: 0801410045

 

Course Requirements:

·      Journal                                                     40%

·      Presentation and class participation          20%

·      Term paper                                                           40%