42 courses with the subject GRST, 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.
GRST 101Civilization in Question1
(Same as CLCS 101 ) In the past, college curricula in this country were often organized around the idea of the “Great Books” of “Western Civilization.” Today though, the very idea of a Western literary canon has been challenged as a vehicle for reinforcing questionable norms and hierarchies and silencing other important perspectives. In this class we read well-known ancient, medieval and Renaissance texts with a view to how they themselves question the civilizations from which they emerge. We challenge the idea that there is a monolithic “Western” tradition while opening up new possibilities for engaging with pre-modern texts and ideas. Readings may include Homer, Aeschylus, Plato, the Hebrew Bible, Augustine, Maimonides and Thomas More. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Few aspects of classical antiquity are more well-loved or more often adapted in as many media (print, film, theater, visual arts, in song,online) than ancient myths. This course introduces students to the academic study of the Greco-Roman mythological tradition. We examine ancient articulations of mythological narratives –– some familiar, some lesser known –– paying attention to the ways that different literary genres employ myth differently. We consider the variability of the mythological tradition within classical antiquity and the social, political, and literary contexts in which such stories circulated. Interpretations by later generations of scholars and artists demonstrate the vitality of these traditions. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Homer’s Iliad , dating from over 2 millennia ago, continues to inspire poets, playwrights and novelists working today. In this class we study contemporary responses to the poem, all of them composed in English within the past five to ten years. The adaptations include poetry, drama and novelistic responses. Among the questions we consider are: Why does the poem, which offers an account of the last year of the mythological war between the Greeks and the Trojans, continue to capture our imagination? What is it about our current cultural moment that has drawn so many artists to the ancient poem? How can we consider the role that the Homer’s poem plays in these modern works while also taking these modern receptions seriously on their own terms? After a close reading of the Iliad , among the modern adaptations we consider are Simon Armitage’s The Story of the Iliad (2015), Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (2012), David Malouf’s Ransom (2011) and Alice Oswald’s Memorial (2013). Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This course examines sites and monuments of the ancient Greek world from the Bronze Age to the Classical period. We introduce archaeological methods, examine the history and developement of Greek archaeology from the origins of the field in the 1870’s to the present, and trace the chronological development of Greek art and architecture across several major sites including Knossos, Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi, and Athens. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding and interpreting monuments in terms of their political, social, and economic contexts. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GRST 105Introduction to Greek and Roman Civilization1
This course introduces students to the history, politics, and culture of ancient Greece and Rome from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. Students in this course acquire broad familiarity with the geography of the ancient Mediterranean, the chronology of Greek and Roman history, and various aspects of Greek and Roman political, social, and cultural life. Topics include ancient art and material culture, literature, myth and religion, elite leisure practices, life in the Roman provinces, the status of women, enslaved, and other marginalized people in the ancient world, and the construction of identity within Greek and Roman societies. This course is intended for students who have no prior experience studying the ancient Greek or Roman worlds. a) Carl Rice; b) Curtis Dozier. All readings are in English translation. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Introduction to the language. In order to fulfill the language requirement, students must also take GRST 126 . Barbara Olsen. Open to all classes. No previous Greek is required. Four 50-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This is the second half of our two-semester introduction to ancient Greek. Students are expected to have taken GRST 125 or to have done some prior work in the language. This course cannot fulfill the language requirement if not taken in conjunction with 125. Carl Rice.
GRST 125 or permission of the instructor or department chair. Open to all classes. Four 50-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
GRST 127Intensive Elementary Greek2
An intensive introduction to the fundamentals of classical Greek grammar and syntax. Students with no background in ancient Greek learn to read Homer, Plato, Greek tragedy, Herodotus, and other classical texts after one semester’s intensive work. This course is the equivalent of GRST 125 - 126 and fulfills the language requirement by itself. Four 50-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ART 144 and URBS 144 ) The great Mediterranean cities of Classical Antiquity, Athens in the 5th c. BC and Rome in the 1st-2nd c. CE (along with some of their satellite cities), are synonymous with the rise of western civilization. The city plans and monumental architecture dominate our view, but this course also focuses on the civic institutions housed in the spectacular buildings and the social worlds shaped by the grand public spaces, as well as the cramped working quarters. Neighborhoods of the rich and the poor, their leisure haunts, and places of congregation and entertainment are explored to reveal the rituals of everyday life and their political consequences. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27.
GRST 145 or permission of the instructor. Open to all classes. Four 50-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
GRST 200Antiquity Now: Reinterpreting Greece and Rome1
In this class we consider the study of ancient Greece and Rome — what has been traditionally been called the field of “Classics.” Engaging in such a project today, with a critical and self-reflective perspective, requires interrogating the assumptions and methods employed in the past. This is necessary because Classical learning, long the province of only an elite few, has been (and in some cases, continues to be) deeply implicated in elitist, colonial, and racist agendas. We both study the uses and abuses of the classical past and consider the many ways that ancient Greece and Rome remain visible and significant in the contemporary world. Such prominence demands critical consideration, and through our study of a series of case-studies we explore the complex ways in which the past and present are mutually informed by one another. As we learn to bring new questions to ancient sources and to discover neglected voices and stories of the ancient world, we also find that the study of antiquity teaches us to see our own world anew. Indeed such study can even challenge the projects with which classical Greece and Rome have been entangled and become a support of liberatory agendas. Our multifaceted approach to this exchange between the ancient and the contemporary includes consideration of such things as: modern adaptations of ancient texts in literature and film; debates about ownership and display of cultural artifacts; the history of classics in the Vassar curriculum; and instances where examples from antiquity are cited to inform contemporary debates. Freed of a value-laden idealizing narrative of antiquity which presumes that that which is ancient has value simply because it is prior, we discover a vibrant space in which to engage in a series of conversations between the ancient world and our own. Curtis Dozier.
Previous work in GRST or permission of the instructor, granted for students with experience studying ancient Greece and Rome in high school or elsewhere. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
GRST 203Women in Greek and Roman History and Myth1
(Same as WFQS 203 ) Greek and Roman literary and historical accounts abound with vividly drawn women such as Helen, Antigone, Medea, Livia, and Agrippina, the mother of Nero. But how representative were such figures of the daily lives of women throughout Greek and Roman antiquity? This course investigates the images and realities of women in the ancient Greek and Roman world, from the Greek Late Bronze Age (c. 1200 BCE) to the Roman Empire (up to the III c. CE) by juxtaposing evidence from literature, historical sources, and archaeological material. Throughout, the course examines the complex ways in which ancient women interacted with the institutions of the state, the family, religion, and the arts. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as DRAM 206 ) In this class we consider the work of the three surviving Athenian tragedians –– Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides–– as well as the continued flourishing of their plays in the forms of new translations, performances, and adaptations. In our study of the ancient plays we examine the historical and civic role of tragedy in Athenian society and the ways in which each tragedian brought his distinct vision to the reshaping of inherited myths to suit his own voice and political moment. We begin with a close study of plays from each tragedian written about the family of Agamemnon– Aeschylus’s Oresteia , Sophocles’s Electra , and Euripides’s Orestes – and look at the different ways that each playwright works within the same mythic cycle. This study of the flexibility of tragic myth-making in antiquity then creates a foundation for our study of modern reinterpretations of select other ancient plays. The modern examples we consider come from a variety of global contexts and a variety of media including dramatic, cinematic, and novelistic. Among the questions we consider are: how does the translator/ playwright / author/ director position their work in relationship to the ancient source text they are working with? What is the difference between a “translation,” a “version,” and an “adaptation”? How does cultural context work to shape a distinctive meaning that is both in conversation with the Greek play and distinctly original? Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as AFRS 209 ) In this class we undertake a close reading of Omeros , a modern epic poem by West Indian Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott (1930-2017). In the poem Walcott celebrates his home island of St. Lucia and the whole of the Caribbean archipelago as he simultaneously confronts the histories of colonialism and slavery that shaped it. While utterly Caribbean in setting, scope and theme, the poem is positioned in close conversation with the Homeric poems and represents, by many accounts, the most important work of Homeric reception in English since Joyce’s Ulysses . Walcott’s alter-ego in the poem is a wandering poet-Odysseus; his St. Lucian characters bear the names of figures from Greek myth— Achille, Hector, Philoctete, Helen— and Homer himself appears in the poem as a figure called “Omeros” who washes up on the St. Lucian shore. As we navigate the poem’s complicated narrative trajectories and follow them back and forth across temporal and spatial boundaries, we explore the ways that Walcott’s positioning of himself in relationship to Homer enacts his vision of a New World aesthetic. We read Omeros alongside select Homeric intertexts and come to inhabit Walcott’s Caribbean, a creolized space of infinite possibility in which he can position himself as another bard, a contemporary of Homer singing in the same song tradition while giving voice to the experience of his people and his native archipelago. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ART 211 and URBS 211 ) From humble beginnings to its conquest of most of the known world, Rome dominated the Mediterranean with the power of its empire. Art and architecture gave monumental expression to its political ideology, especially in the building of cities that spread Roman civilization across most of Europe and parts of the Middle East and Africa. Roman art also featured adornment, luxury, and collecting in both public and private spheres. Given the diversity of the people included in the Roman empire and its artistic forms, what is particularly Roman about Roman art?
ART 105 - ART 106 or GRST 216 or GRST 217 , or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GRST 215The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Egypt1
(Same as ART 215 ) Ancient Egypt has long fascinated the public with its pyramids, mummies, and golden divine rulers. This course provides a survey of the archaeology, art, and architecture of ancient Egypt from the prehistoric cultures of the Nile Valley through the period of Cleopatra’s rule and Roman domination. Topics to be studied include the art of the funerary cult and the afterlife, technology and social organization, and court rituals of the pharaohs, along with aspects of everyday life.
ART 105 or ART 106 or one unit of Greek and Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27.
GRST 216History of the Ancient Greeks1
(Same as HIST 216 ) This course examines the history and culture of the ancient Greeks from the emergence of the city-state in the eighth century BCE to the conquests of Alexander the Great in 335 BCE. In addition to an outline of the political and social history of the Greeks, the course examines several historical, cultural, and methodological topics in depth, including the emergence of writing, Greek colonialism and imperialism, ancient democracy, polytheism, the social structures of Athenian society, and the relationship between Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures. Students both read primary sources (for example, Sappho, Tyrtaios, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristophanes, and Plato) and examine sites and artifacts recovered through archaeology; the development of students’ critical abilities to evaluate and use these sources for the study of history is a primary goal of the class. Barbara Olsen. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HIST 217 ) This course examines the history of the ancient Romans from the foundation of their city around the eighth century BCE to the collapse of their Mediterranean Empire in the fifth century CE. The course offers a broad historical outline of Roman history, but focuses on significant topics and moments in Roman history, including the Republican aristocracy, the civil and slave wars of the Late Republic, the foundation of the Empire by Caesar Augustus, urbanism, the place of public entertainments (gladiatorial combats, Roman hunts, chariot races, and theater) in society, the rise of Christianity, the processes of Romanization, and barbarization, and the political decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Students read primary sources such as Plautus, Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, and secondary accounts dealing with important issues such as slavery, religious persecution and multiculturalism. Students also examine important archaeological sites and artifacts. The development of students’ critical abilities to evaluate and use these sources for the study of history is a primary goal of the class. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Consolidation of ancient Greek grammar and reading of unadapted texts. This course should be elected by students before electing any advanced Greek course in the department. Barbara Olsen.
GRST 125 - 126 or the equivalent. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: INT
Offered
Spring
GRST 237Archaeological Research1
(Same as ANTH 237 ) In this project-based course, students undertake research inspired both by recent advances in the field and by the needs of local communities. Skills covered include landscape studies using geographic information systems, field surveys which combine hiking and mapping, artifact analysis and curation. Regions studied include North America, Bronze Age Europe, and Ancient Egypt. Students who have already completed the introductory course, ANTH 130-Archaeology: Lessons From the Past , are well-prepared for this course but it is not a prerequisite. Some project work takesplace outside of the regularly scheduled class times and students are expected to attend those work sessions. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Selected readings from authors such as Plautus, Cicero, Catullus, Caesar, Sallust, and Virgil. The selection of readings is designed to consolidate knowledge of grammar, provide an introduction to the translation of continuous, unadapted Latin, and highlight interesting features of Roman culture in the last two centuries of the Republic. Carl Rice.
GRST 145 - GRST 146 or permission of the instructor or chair. Three 50-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
GRST 246Intermediate Latin II1
Authors may include Horace, Livy, Ovid, Seneca, Petronius, Suetonius, and Virgil. Readings are selected to illustrate the diversity of literary forms that flourished in the early Empire and the interaction of literature with society, politics, and private life.
GRST 245 or permission of the instructor. Three 50-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GRST 281Black Classicisms and the Human(ities)1
(Same as AFRS 281 and ANST 281 ) “The Classics” have long been associated with elite educational institutions and constructions of “Western civilization” that, at their worst, provide a thin veil for white supremacy. South Carolina Senator and eventual Vice President John C. Calhoun once claimed that if somebody could find a Black man who understood Greek, then he might at last believe that that man “was a human being and should be treated as a man.” In his account of escaping enslavement, Samuel Ringgold Ward counters Calhoun by pointing to a Roman African author, asking, “Was Terence, the black poet, a gentleman?” At stake in the gatekeeping of the Greek and Roman past is the definition of what it means to be truly human and, as a result, who the humanities are for. In this course, we explore the rich history of Black writers from the eighteenth century to the present day who have reclaimed and reimagined Greco-Roman antiquity. Pairing selections from ancient Greek and Roman texts with readings from authors including Phillis Wheatley Peters, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, and Rita Dove, we trace the lives and afterlives of mythological figures like Niobe and Medea. Drawing on the work of poets, novelists, critics, and a range of other thinkers, we ask: How have Black writers complicated and refined ideas of the human and the humanities in light of the classics? Who has gotten to define “The Classics” in the United States? What kinds of capital are at play when someone alludes to Homer, Ovid, or Terence? How have Black classicist authors reimagined ancient Greek and Roman texts? Rachel Morrison.
Permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
GRST 292Collecting Antiquities at Vassar: Lost and Found in the Loeb1
(Same as ART 292 ) This intensive is designed as a directed independent study conducted in the Loeb Antiquities storeroom for close study of ancient art and artifacts. The intensive aims to impart skills involved in identifying fakes and establishing authenticity, to consider the ethics and politics of collecting, and to explore the changing role of ancient art in the museum and its display in galleries.
Prerequisite(s): Previous work in Greek and Roman Studies or permission of the instructor. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GRST 321Advanced Greek: Topics in Greek Literature1
(Runs concurrent with GRST 221.) This Intensive allows students at the advanced levels to read Greek together in an informal setting. Readings vary as well as the amount of time spent on grammar review, which depends on the needs of those enrolled. a) Curtis Dozier; b) Barbara Olsen.
GRST 221 or the equivalent. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: INT
Offered
Fall and Spring
GRST 326Readings in Greek1
Students read from prose and verse in Greek in order to advance their reading skills and study a particular topic in Greek literature or history. Readings in Greek are supplemented with secondary readings in English.
GRST 125 - 126 or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
GRST 328Anne Carson and the Poetry of Translation0.5
In this Intensive we devote ourselves to the close reading of selected works of the genre defying Anne Carson– classicist, translator, poet, novelist and critic. In her work she deftly weaves her lifelong study of Greek and Latin literature with her own fiercely imaginative refiguring of ancient texts, moving seamlessly between acts of translation and the fulfillment of her own poetic vision. Our readings include examples of her more traditional translations as well as of her bolder works, such as her multimedia Nox , where she interweaves a translation of Catullus 101 with a meditation on her brother’s death, If not, Winter , where she forces her reader to grapple with the almost entirely fragmentary nature of Sappho’s poems, or her Norma Jeane Baker of Troy , a performance piece where she brings together Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe. We also consider some of her essays as well as critical assessments of her work. Rachel Friedman.
GRST 245 or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GRST 342Virgil1
Selections from the Eclogues , Georgics , or Aeneid . Subjects of study include the artistry of the Virgilian hexameter, the relationship of Virgil’s works to their Greek models, and general topics such as his conception of destiny, religion, and the human relation to nature. Curtis Dozier.
GRST 245 or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
GRST 343Tacitus1
Close readings from the works of the imperial historian and ethnographer Tacitus. In connection with further developing students’ reading skills, the class focuses on particular literary, cultural, or historical issues. Carl Rice.
GRST 245 or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
GRST 345Latin Biography1
Two large collections of Latin imperial biographies survive from antiquity: Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars and the late ancient Historia Augusta. Through a close reading of a text from each of these corpora, this course explores imperial biography as a genre of Latin literature. Participants will consider how these authors portrayed their imperial subjects, as well as the emperors’ personalities, families, achievements, shortcomings, and, last but not least, the intrigues that surrounded their reigns. In addition to emphasizing accurate reading and translation skills, we will also pay special attention to the rhetorical strategies, techniques, and themes these authors employed in their work. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Seminar required of all Greek and Roman Studies majors in the Fall semester of their senior year to prepare to complete a senior project or thesis in the Spring. Topics include: defining a research question and/or topic; identifying and working with appropriate source materials; finding and evaluating existing scholarship related to the topic; organizing my information; and considering appropriate methodology. After this course students should be ready to write a directed senior thesis or project. Senior Greek and Roman Studies majors only. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
Seminar required of all Greek and Roman Studies majors in the Fall semester of their senior year to prepare to complete a senior project or thesis in the Spring. Topics include: defining a research question and/or topic; identifying and working with appropriate source materials; finding and evaluating existing scholarship related to the topic; organizing my information; and considering appropriate methodology. After this course students should be ready to write a directed senior thesis or project. Rachel Friedman.
Senior Greek and Roman Studies Majors Only One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
GRST 382White Nationalism and Greco-Roman Antiquity1
(Same as ANST 382 and INTL 382 ) Ever since a mob chanted “Jews will not replace us” at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the resurgence of white nationalist politics in the United States has become increasingly difficult to ignore. This course investigates the intellectual foundations of this phenomenon by examining the inspiration this movement takes from the texts and symbols of ancient Greece and Rome. References that a casual observer might assume amount to nothing more than abuse of history turn out to be symptomatic of the long-standing and wide-ranging entanglement of white supremacy, the nation state, and the study of history. Beginning with a survey of examples of white nationalist classicism and the core tenets of white nationalist ideologies in the twenty-first century, the course then turns to an investigation of the rhetorical utility of Greco-Roman antiquity for white nationalist activists; the relationship between overt and mainstream white nationalism; the racial politics of the Enlightenment ideals that underpin modern concepts of nationhood; and the links between political theory and real-world violence. Curtis Dozier.
One course in GRST or INTL 360 / HIST 360 , or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
GRST 383Queering the Classics1
(Same as WFQS 383 ) Sapphic. Lesbian. “Greek love.” Greco-Roman antiquity is foundational to so much of the language of queerness. In this course, we trace how people have constructed modern queer identities through and in relation to ideas about (what we might call) queerness in the ancient world. We examine both homoeroticism and gender variance in ancient Greece and Rome and its afterlives in queer art and discourse to the present day, pairing, for example, The Song of Achilles with Homer’s Iliad , Hedwig and the Angry Inch with Plato’s Symposium , Anne Lister’s diaries with the poems of Martial. We pay careful attention to the use of classical antiquity in circumscribing more-inclusive queer communities, as well as in gatekeeping and excluding those who, for example, had limited access to the study of Greek and Latin. We also explore how studying other cultures’ attitudes and assumptions about gender and sexuality can reframe or complicate our own; what it means to look to the past for queer origins, affinities, or ancestry; and how to make sense of the myriad ways that people have used “the classics” as a way of talking about and around queerness throughout history. Rachel Morrison.
