ANCIENT 749 A & B
ANCIENT 749

Themes and Issues in Ancient Culture


Please note: this is archived course information from 2020 for ANCIENT 749.

Description

Students will learn how to analyse and interpret ancient literary texts including poetry and historiography and evaluate modern scholarship. They will conduct independent research for their essays using all these resources. They will learn presentation skills through seminar delivery. They will learn to analyse and reflect upon ancient texts and general questions in preparing for the course tests, and through direct engagement with the ancient literary works and other source material.

They will learn how to evaluate ancient literary works in their own terms and use them appropriately and critically for a clearer understanding of the past, how to overcome biased and partisan source material, and develop an appreciation of the way that interconnected ideas and concepts influence and affect one another, how historical processes affect society and learn how to explain these ideas and processes coherently in an academic manner.

Topic for 2020: Power and Justice, Gods and Rulers, in Early Greece

In this study of archaic and early classical Greece we will read texts by Homer, Hesiod, Solon, early philosophical fragments and Aeschylus, from both a historical and literary point of view, as well as a range of important historical authors. Our aims will include critical appreciation of the poetry as poetry, and also as historical evidence for the development of the Greek city state and related political and religious ideas, practices and institutions, focusing mainly on Athens. Students will be able to choose which aspects of the texts and topics they concentrate upon, without ignoring the others. Class meetings will include student seminars, and require preparatory reading and regular contribution to discussion.

To complete this course students must enrol in ANCHIST 749 A and B. 

Assessment

Assessment will be on the basis of student seminars, essays and tests and/or final exam.

View the course syllabus

Availability 2020

Semester 1 and 2 (full year)

Lecturer(s)

Lecturer(s) Dr Dougal Blyth

Reading/Texts


Recommended Reading


Assessment


Points

ANCIENT 749A: 15 points

ANCIENT 749B: 15 points

ANCIENT 749: 30 points

Prerequisites


Restrictions

ANCHIST 749