15 courses with the subject CLCV UN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
CLCV UN1001Introduction to Greek Mythology3.00
The stories of the Greek and Roman gods and heroes are at the root of countless works of art, philosophy, literature, and film, from antiquity to the present. Many familiar phrases from the English language also derive from myth: an Achilles heel (and Achilles tendon!), a Trojan horse, Pandora’s box, and so forth. This course will introduce you to the broad range of tales that make up the complex and interconnected network of Greek and Roman mythology
This class tracks Egypt’s entanglement in the Greco-Roman world from the country’s initial welcoming of Greek merchants and mercenaries to the point at which Justinian shuttered its last remaining temple. In examining archaeological, textual, and artistic evidence, we’ll pay close attention to the flashpoints that divided society along ethnic lines (viz. Egyptian, Nubian, Levantine, Greek, and Roman inhabitants) and according to religious belief (among polytheists of Egyptian and Greek heritage, Jewish Egyptians, and Christians) as well as to syncretism, mixed marriages, and other integrative aspects of society
The reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (27bce-14ce), has been seen as a Roman revolution, both political and cultural. Rome had for centuries been governed as a Republic, but a series of increasingly divisive civil wars allowed Augustus to create a new political system in which he exercised sole rule as the ‘first citizen’ within a ‘Restored Republic’. Augustus’ reign lasted more than 40 years, and established a model of autocratic rule that would last for four centuries. During this time there were profound changes in the political, social, and cultural structures of Rome. In this course, you will examine the nature of these changes, Augustus’ political strategies, military activities, and religious initiatives through his own writing, the accounts of (often hostile) historians and a range of literary and archaeological sources, including Roman poetry. Ultimately, we will address the question: how did Augustus achieve the seemingly paradoxical feat of becoming a monarch within a republican system?
This course aims to identify, analyze, and discuss ancient Greek and Roman medical theories, observations, methodologies for diagnosis and treatment, and the philosophical and professional disputes that arose around them. This course is arranged thematically and focuses on common methodologies, such as reasoning from first causes, in contrast to epistemic observation and experience. Other broad themes include the relationship between medicine and natural history, and the connection between medical treatments and the rise of herbals as ostensibly reliable sources of information. By focusing on such general themes and methodologies, and by reading the original Greek and Latin texts in translation, this course will aim to provide an answer to the following questions: in what exactly did ancient Greek and Roman medicine consist and how did the field’s practitioners and theorists perform medical work, in their own words? There are no prerequisites for this course, nor does it require knowledge of Greek or Latin. It is equally suited to premed students, individuals with an interest in medical humanities, and Classics students
CLCV UN3015Race and Ethnicity in the Greco-Roman World - Discussion0
This course provides an introduction to ancient attitudes towards race and ethnicity. Students will be challenged to consider how categories of race and ethnicity are presented in the literature and artistic works of Greece and Rome, and how ancient thinking remains current and influential today. We will consider texts from antiquity including epic, history, medical texts, ethnographies, dramas, and novels, as well as material evidence intended to represent ‘foreignness’. Our case studies pay particular attention to concepts including notions of racial formation and racial origins, ancient theories of ethnic superiority, and linguistic, religious and cultural differentiation as a basis for ethnic differentiation. We will also examine ancient racism through the prism of a variety of social processes in antiquity, such as slavery, trade and colonization, migrations, imperialism, assimilation, native revolts, and genocide. By the end of the course, students will have gained a richer understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of the ancient world, and will be able to engage in discussions of identity construction in a comparative manner.
This seminar looks at the narrative and the historical context for an extraordinary event: the conquest of the Persian empire by Alexander III of Macedonia, conventionally known as “Alexander the Great”. We will explore the different worlds Alexander grew out of, confronted, and affected: the old Greek world, the Persian empire, the ancient near-east (Egypt, Levant, Babylonia, Iran), and the worlds beyond, namely pre-Islamic (and pre-Silk Road) Central Asia, the Afghan borderlands, and the Indus valley. The first part of the course will establish context, before laying out a narrative framework; the second part of the course will explore a series of themes, especially the tension between military conquest, political negotiation, and social interactions. Overall, the course will serve as an exercise in historical methodology (with particular attention to ancient sources and to interpretation), an introduction to the geography and the history of the ancient world (classical and near-eastern), and the exploration of a complex testcase located at the contact point between several worlds, and at a watershed of world history
CLCV UN3069Society and Power in the Hellenistic Age3.00
This course explore the Hellenistic world (not to be confused with the “Hellenic world”)— the spaces and communities in the Mediterranean, Africa and Western Asia, in the centuries following the destruction of the Achaimenid empire. The themes studied include the formation of large tributary empires, and their strategies for implementing control; local political agency; cultural interaction, within frameworks of imperial power, between Greek and non-Greek; social relations; economic history; and more. This world seems created by a historical accident, but might equally be described as the result of deep structural features (the convergence of polis institutions, the rise of a connected economy, the spread of Greek cultural forms). The interpretation of this extraordinary period has been influenced by a number of factors, some intrinsic to the field (the availability of rich documentary evidence), some extrinsic (the rise and fall of European colonialism); it also has been characterised by paradigm shifts (from decline to vitality to diversities). This course will offer the occasion to test paradigms of “globalization” across many ancient contexts. It will do so by close reading of courses, broader surveys, and constant engagement with historical problems. Its main focus will be on the third and early second centuries BCE (“high Hellenistic period”), with some attention paid to the following century. The historian Polybios (ca. 200 BCE-after 118 BCE) will serve as a guide for both periods, especially his narrative of the year 217 BCE which culminates in the narrative of the battle of Raphia (as well as the arrival of the Roman Republic on the political scene of the Eastern Mediterranean). The course aims to achieve the following goals. First, to impart familiarity with events in a crucial period of ancient history. Second, to impart with the physical, historical, and human geographies of the area covered by the “Hellenistic world”— in the longue durée. This means spaces and regions from Spain to Central Asia: ancient Afro-Eurasia.Thirdly, to learn how to read fragmentary or indirect sources, often documentary, and in conjunction with material and visual evidence. Fourthly, to read historical studies by modern scholars, evaluate academic argument (notably in the deployment of evidence but also of theoretical models), and to produce historical argument in exams and paper. Fifthly, to evaluate the history of the Hellenistic age from a number of angles: power and politics; pre-modern economic history; forms of “globalization” and “glocalization”; contacts between cultures under conditions shaped by political power and material forces
CLCV UN3070Polis: the Biography of the Ancient Greek City-State 650 BCE-350 CE4.00
This course explores the history of the Greek city-state, first as a long narrative story from the obscure leap to stately forms in the Aegean basin during the early seventh century BCE, to the end of municipal forms in the late Roman empire in the fourth century CE. Is there a single polis form that develops and endures during this century ? This is the concern of the first half of the course. The second half explores implications of the polis as a social and political organism: as ideas, ideology and institutions; as self-interest; and as a site and a tool of domination. The possible consequences for the politics of living together will be examined throughout the course, which balances between history and political philosophy
CLCV UN3071Discussion - Polis: the Biography of the Ancient Greek City-State 650 BCE-350 CE0.00
This course explores the history of the Greek city-state, first as a long narrative story from the obscure leap to stately forms in the Aegean basin during the early seventh century BCE, to the end of municipal forms in the late Roman empire in the fourth century CE. Is there a single polis form that develops and endures during this century ? This is the concern of the first half of the course. The second half explores implications of the polis as a social and political organism: as ideas, ideology and institutions; as self-interest; and as a site and a tool of domination. The possible consequences for the politics of living together will be examined throughout the course, which balances between history and political philosophy
CLCV UN3090Isiac cults in contexts; Egyptian cults in the Graeco-Roman world3.00
This course looks at the long history of the “Egyptian” cults (cults of Isis, Osiris, Anubis, Sarapis, and Harpocrates) mainly outside of Egypt and in periods much later than the Pharaonic heyday of Ancient Egypt, that is, the Hellenistic and the Roman empire. By looking at and closely reading primary documents in translation, visual evidence, and archaeological remains, we aim to explore critical issues in the study of ancient polytheism, such as sacred space, the role of priests, religious sociology problems, forms of religious, ritual dynamics, construction of emotions religious and the sense of self and community. An issue of particular interest is the relationship between religious ethos and economic life and the relationship with various forms of power. Questions of gender will be central to the problematique. In addition to the seminar, there will be frequent visits to the Met, individually or as a group
Thanks to the pyramids of Giza, the treasure of Tutankhamun, and other remains of royal activity, pharaonic Egypt is justly famous for its monuments and material culture. Equally fascinating, if less well known, however, are the towns, fortresses, cultic centers, domestic spaces, and non-elite cemeteries that have been excavated over the past 200 years or so. The archaeology of Nubia is also little known but fascinating on many levels. This course will focus on what archaeology can reveal about life as it was experienced by individuals of all social classes. Through a combination of broad surveys and case studies of some of Egypt and Nubia’s most culturally indicative and intriguing sites, we will explore issues such as the origins of inequality, state formation and its effects, the uneasy mix of state-planned settlements and village life, urbanism, domestic and community worship, gendered spaces, ethnicity and colonialism, religious revolution and evolution, bureaucracy, private enterprise, and the effects of governmental collapse on life and death in ancient Egypt and Nubia
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement Prerequisites: completion of first semester of CC recommended. Although separated by a distance of nearly 5,000 miles, Classical Greece and China witnessed the near-simultaneous emergence of complex, centralized city-states, intensive agricultural cultivation, urbanization, the growth of imperial administrations, and scientific and technological revolutions. Each also witnessed the emergence of competing schools of philosophy. This course surveys principal works of Classical Greek and Chinese philosophy (where possible in their totality). Our goals are both contextualist and comparativist. Alternating between philosophical traditions, we shall read, discuss, and analyze several works of ancient Greek philosophy and Classical Chinese philosophy within their unique historical contexts and in comparision to one another.
Between 431 and 404 BCE, a world war pitted the sea empire of democratic Athens against the land-based hegemony of Sparta, the culmination of decades of cold war, uneasy coexistence and open conflict between the two powers. The first twenty years of this major event in ancient history are painstakingly recorded in a monumental work, the War of the Peloponnesians and Athenians by the Athenian Thucydides, a participant in the conflict. This remarkable and highly crafted text combines a hyperreal narrative season by season, analyses of causality, character and motivation, and competing ethical and practical interpretations. We will approach Thucydides' War in four different ways: as a piece of historiography; as set of political or social scientifically oriented demonstrations; as a philosophical meditation on justice and power in the world; and as a historical document for a richly interesting period. Are these four approaches mutually compatible and reinforcing ? The close reading of the text (for reasons of time, we will look at Books 1-5, 8 will be completed by engagement with secondary literature (four monographs and articles) and with contemporary documents (inscriptions), the latter offering a fragmentary counterpoint to Thucydidean narrative. After reading the text, we will spend time on thematic debates involving the narrative and contextual material. The aim of this close work is to produce a Thucydides beyond the clichés of contemporary punditry ("the Thucydides trap"), closely fitting within Columbia undergraduate training (where Thucydides has vanished from the Core), and bridging the gap between contextualizing and modernizing readings.
CLCV UN3321War, reality and truth in Thucydides - Discussion0
Between 431 and 404 BCE, a world war pitted the sea empire of democratic Athens against the land-based hegemony of Sparta, the culmination of decades of cold war, uneasy coexistence and open conflict between the two powers. The first twenty years of this major event in ancient history are painstakingly recorded in a monumental work, the War of the Peloponnesians and Athenians by the Athenian Thucydides, a participant in the conflict. This remarkable and highly crafted text combines a hyperreal narrative season by season, analyses of causality, character and motivation, and competing ethical and practical interpretations. We will approach Thucydides' War in four different ways: as a piece of historiography; as set of political or social scientifically oriented demonstrations; as a philosophical meditation on justice and power in the world; and as a historical document for a richly interesting period. Are these four approaches mutually compatible and reinforcing ? The close reading of the text (for reasons of time, we will look at Books 1-5, 8 will be completed by engagement with secondary literature (four monographs and articles) and with contemporary documents (inscriptions), the latter offering a fragmentary counterpoint to Thucydidean narrative. After reading the text, we will spend time on thematic debates involving the narrative and contextual material. The aim of this close work is to produce a Thucydides beyond the clichés of contemporary punditry ("the Thucydides trap"), closely fitting within Columbia undergraduate training (where Thucydides has vanished from the Core), and bridging the gap between contextualizing and modernizing readings.
