Rough syllabus for 2015, based on 2013’s syllabus and subject to emendation
June 1st-June 4th: classes on campus.
We will be reading selections from the Iliad and Odyssey, full syllabus tba, but incorporating Iliad 2’s Catalog of Ships to orient students in Greek geography, Iliad 14-16, Iliad 19, Iiad 22-4 and Odyssey 3 and 4, 9-17, 19-23.
Also this article: Modern Greece’s Real Problem? Ancient Greece (
We will also work on a short piece of a Greek chorus for performance at the Theatre in Epidavros.
June 5th: Preparation for flying.
June 6th: Flight from Charlotte to Athens, arriving June 7th.
June 7th: Athens. Tour of city.
June 8th: Athens. Acropolis and New Acropolis Museum. ? performance at Athens Festival.
June 9th: National Museum of Athens: SOPHOCLES ANTIGONE and OEDIPUS at COLONUS
June 10th: Travel to Tolo
June 11th: Mycenae and Epidavros: AESCHYLUS: AGAMEMNON
June 12th: class day: AESCHYLUS: CHOEPHORI and EUMENIDES
June 13th: Travel to Delphi: Visit to site of Delphi
June 14th: Delphi Museum. Return to Athens and fly to Chania, Crete EURIPIDES: ION
June 15th: Chania. Optional visit to hiking Samaria Gorge
June 16th: Chania to Iraklion. Visit to Knossos, EURIPIDES’ HIPPOLYTUS
June 17th: Ferry to Santorini
June 18th: Visit to Akrotiri.
June 19th: Santorini to Mykonos
June 20th: Delos
June 21st: Mykonos to Mytiline, Lesbos
June 22nd: Hot baths at Lesbos, followed by journey to Eressos
June 23rd: Eressos. SOPHOCLES’ PHILOCTETES. Additionally, poetry of Sappho is on Moodle page
June 24th: Return to Mytilene; fly from Lesbos to Thessaloniki
June 25th: Thessaloniki: Perrotis Farm School.
June 26th: Thessaloniki: Perrotis Farm School EURIPIDES’ BACCHAE
June 27th: Day trip to Thassos
June 28th: Day trip to Vergina. FINAL DISCUSSION: ANCIENT AND MODERN GREECE
June 29th: Students fly home from Thessaloniki.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Selections from the Iliad and Odyssey, available in electronic version on our Moodle page. You must bring some form of your text to each class session, whether on an electronic reader of some kind or printouts. This course is tailored to our travels in Greece, and it is largely geographically based and, at least in its later stages, tied to where we will be on a particular day. Class sessions will last between one and a half and two hours. You will be expected to have read all the tragedies before we discuss them, and you will find it helpful to read as many as you can before you leave for Greece so that you are not reading everything for the first time in Greece while also trying to take in ancient and modern Greek culture.
Euripides: Four Plays: Medea, Bacchae, Heracles, Hippolytus Edited by Stephen Esposito (Focus, 2002)
The Oresteia by Aeschylus Translated by Alan Shapiro and Peter Burian
The Three Theban Plays translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction by Bernard Knox.
Euripides’ Ion (available electronically)
Additional material on the relationship between Ancient and Modern Greece will be available on Moodle.
Student Learning Outcomes
This course primarily concerns SLO 2 from the Classics department: - Students understand the values and beliefs of the people and cultures of the ancient Mediterranean region and learn to clarify and articulate their own values in comparison with them.
ASSIGNMENTS
- 60% of your grade will be based on mandatory attendance at all class meetings, with willingness to offer informed contribution to discussion and engagement with the topics at hand.
- Specifics for participation: For each class, I would like two people to begin the discussion with a question or topic for discussion each. Additionally, we will perform a short choral piece in Greek, for performance at the theatre of Epidaurus on June 11th.
- Note also that the museum, site, and other cultural visits are also a part of this course and require full participation to get full credit.
- The remaining 40% of your grade will be based on your answer to the following prompt: “It was all so unimaginably different And all so long ago.” (Louis MacNeice). How far does the study of ancient Greek culture have any relevance for modern Greek culture? How would you characterise the relationship between the Greek culture of the 21st century CE and ancient Greek culture? What continuities or discontinuities have you seen between the two cultures? You may talk about art, literature, language, architecture, social attitudes in so far as you can observe them, music, or any other manifestations of culture in its widest sense. Is there any sense in which ancient Greek culture might have more direct links with western culture(s) generally than with the Greece of today? Have the ancient texts and monuments had any influence on your perceptions of the modern societies you have experienced, or vice versa? Has anything changed in your perceptions of ancient or modern Greek culture in the time you have been away?”
- For this, it is strongly recommended that you take notes in a journal as you travel. This will be an entirely private, ungraded and unsupervised piece of writing, but I recommend you make the effort to create one, partly to have a unique artifact arising from your journey abroad, and also so that you have material to work on when you return, because these trips are so packed with activities that it is very easy to forget parts of them, especially the little details that can sometimes lead to some important insights when you reflect on them a couple of weeks later.
- Your completed paper should be at least 10-12 pages in length (maybe longer) and should cover all the questions in the prompt. Date by which a polished final draft should be in my hands is July 10th but obviously you are welcome to get it in earlier. You will be graded on the breadth of the materials and arguments you use to answer this question, and the completeness of your response, as well as the usual stylistic and grammatical niceties. Where appropriate, feel free to offer visual evidence, though it is not mandatory and pictures of Greek sunsets etc,, lovely though they are, will be no substitute for critical analysis of your experiences.