CLLT UN

Prerequisites: HUMA CC1001 or HUMA GS1001COCI CC1101

Subject

CLLT UN

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu

While the word ‘homosexual’ didn’t appear in print until 1891, Ancient Greece and Rome were full of queers, people whose sexual behavior, desires, gender, and/or other characteristics were at odds with dominant norms. This course traces ancient queerness across three modules. First, we discuss primary evidence and scholarly attitudes towards homoeroticism and gender variance in antiquity. Second, we explore the reception of ancient homoeroticism at the turn of the 20th century, a period that witnessed an explosion of engagement with ancient queer icons. Third, we trace the transformations of ancient queer myths and imagery in contemporary popular culture, engaging with film, novels, Zines, and social media. No prerequisites

Subject

CLLT UN

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu

Hercules is one of the most ancient, widespread, and enduring figures to emerge from the ancient Mediterranean. He is a figure of multiples: myriad labors, multiple wives, multiple fathers, and multiple identities. Together we will discover a broad range of literature on this hero and-like ancient writers and thinkers-we will use Hercules to explore mortality, divinity, masculinity, madness, and contradiction. We will read Hercules in different ancient genres, with a particular emphasis on Tragedy, Comedy, and Philosophy. The final units of our course will explore contemporary "heros," including the Hulk, "The Rock," and Disney's Hercules.

Subject

CLLT UN

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu

This course aims at highlighting both the most important general features and the most important peculiarities of the literary masterpieces produced in the age of Nero. The basic question we will be addressing in class is what it means to be a literary artist under the rule of a despot. In order to fulfill Nero’s megalomaniac need for exaltation, cope with his absolute power and, at the same time, maintain their personal identity and ethical values as writers, Seneca, Petronius and Lucan strove to balance in their works the emperor’s expectations and their own artistic designs. These artists were not free to write what they wanted to write for present and future generations, but they tried to write it nevertheless. In this course, we will examine the extent of freedom of expression under Nero; the rhetorical techniques Neronian writers resorted to in order to express tactful modes of oblique commentary and criticism; the difficulties of the individual’s liberty in a climate of dictatorial oppression; the ways in which literature helps us discover more about the society of a given time; and, ultimately, the universal and eternal desire for artists to be themselves and express their own views in spite of mortal dangers. Such issues are all the more pertinent in the present day: in 1989, the novelist Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by the ayatollah Khomeyni after the publication of The Satanic Verses and fled to the United Kingdom; in 2011, the visual artist Ai Weiwei, whose most recent installation is currently exhibited in New York City, at Washington Square Park, served 81 days in a Chinese prison because of his artwork against dictatorial regimes. He eventually left China and settled in Berlin.No knowledge of Latin is required, as the focus of this course is literary, historical and sociological interpretation rather than linguistic competence.

Subject

CLLT UN

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu

Homer’s Odyssey, likely composed around the 9 th or 8 th century BCE, has had an enduring legacy. Our journey this semester will bring us into contact with a varied selection of artistic endeavors, spanning different cultures, times, and media, that draw on the Odyssey for material or inspiration. A guiding set of broadly-formulated questions will steer our course: Can we find in the Odyssey some of the same meaning, today, that it held for its original audience and that it held, subsequently, for later Greeks? Do receptions of the Odyssey try to recapture it, reframe it, refashion it, or become something independent? (Are these mutually exclusive options?) How do we read these works in light of the Odyssey, and also how do we re-visit and re-read the Odyssey in light of its receptions? It is no secret that the present bears the enduring weight of the past, but is the past changed as a result? There is no requirement to have read the Odyssey previously: students who have read it or have not read it will approach the course in different, but equally fruitful, ways

Subject

CLLT UN

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu

Survey of major myths from the ancient Near East to the advent of Christianity, with emphasis upon the content and treatment of myths in classical authors (Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Vergil, Livy, Ovid). Modern Greek

Subject

CLLT UN

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu