11 courses with the subject GRE, 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.
GRE 103Intensive Ancient Greek
Instructor Cheshire For beginners. No prior acquaintance with Greek assumed! Together, we’ll cover the whole of ancient Greek grammar, reading excerpts from Greek literature along the way. By the conclusion of the semester, you will be thoroughly prepared for GRE 201, which fulfills the college’s language requirement and serves as the gateway to advanced courses in ancient Greek. Requires participation in AT sessions. Meets five days a week. Equivalent to GRE 101 and 102 combined, counting for two courses Satisfies Classical Studies major and minor requirement. Prerequisites & Notes Offered annually in Spring.
Instructor T. Lee This course fulfills the college’s language requirement and is your gateway to advanced Greek at Davidson. Together, we’ll review the language’s grammar by reading and discussing excerpts from a wide variety of prose and poetry (tragedy, comedy, history, rhetoric, epic, lyric, philosophy, hymn, bucolic, and the Christian New Testament), all the while exploring concepts such as semantics, pronunciation, and translation. Satisfies language requirement. Satisfies Classical Languages and Literature major requirement. Prerequisites & Notes (Offered annually, Fall only.)
Instructor Cheshire This course focuses on verse celebrations by Pindar (c. 518 - c. 438 BCE) of victories in ancient Greek athletic contests such as the famous games at Olympia and Delphi. A rich trove of mythic lore, these commissioned songs for public performance participated in fascinating constructions of personal, civic, and ethnic identities while at the same time speaking more broadly to humanity’s relationship with the divine, our individual capacity for heroism greater than human, and the very real limitations our mortality imposes upon us. Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major. Counts toward the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory. Satisfies the Language requirement. Prerequisites & Notes GRE 201. Students who have already taken a Greek course at the 200 level beyond 201 should enroll in GRE 316. Not offered in 2026-2027
Instructor Cheshire We will read Sophocles’ Antigone in Greek, considering along the way not only generic features of Greek tragedy (e.g., dialogue, chorus, metrics, and matters of staging) but also – as the play invites us to! –such matters as deconstruction of gender, conceptions of justice (divine and mortal), the pressures and limits of power, and of course young love. Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement Satisfies Classical Languages and Literature major requirement. Satisfies Classical Studies major requirement. Satisfies Greek minor requirement. Satisfies Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor requirement. Prerequisites & Notes GRE 201 or placement test. Students who have not yet taken a GRE course beyond 201 may enroll in this course as GRE 233. Fall 2026
Instructor Cheshire Socrates, citizen of Athens and one of the most celebrated thinkers in history, was sentenced to death by the democratic government under which he lived. We will not only consider why this happened, but also grapple with the impossible “Socratic Problem,” trying to gain a coherent sense of who Socrates really was. We will read in Greek excerpts from Aristophanes’ Clouds, the comedy that may well have played a role in his execution, and some strikingly different posthumous attempts (by Plato and Xenophon) to rehabilitate Socrates’ reputation. Other more minor evidence for Socrates’ life - some fragmentary - will be read in Greek or English. Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major. Counts towards the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory. Counts towards Greek minor. Prerequisites & Notes GRE 201 or placement test. Students who have taken a GRE course beyond 201 should enroll in this course as GRE 362. Not offered 2026-2027
Instructor McClellan Apollonius’ Argonautica , the sole extant example of epic from the vibrant Greek Hellenistic Period, charts the tumultuous journey of Jason and the Argonauts to claim the legendary Golden Fleece from the far-off realm of Colchis, on the coast of the Black Sea. We will read Book 3 of the poem in Greek. Students will focus on developing reading skills and reviewing grammar, syntax, and meter. We will also investigate the poem’s socio-cultural contexts and the eclecticism of the Hellenistic Period. Finally, students will read the rest of the epic in English and explore Apollonius’ pivotal place in the larger Greco-Roman epic tradition. As the only complete epic poem written between Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Roman epic the Aeneid , the Argonautica is deeply indebted to its epic predecessors and an enormous influence on its successors. Consequently, a major goal of the course is to gain an understanding of the poem’s themes, style, and intertextuality to appreciate its place in the genre and how it was received in antiquity. This course is repeatable for credit. Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major. Counts towards the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory. Satisfies Language requirement. Prerequisites & Notes GRE 201 or placement test. Students who have not yet taken a GRE course beyond 201 may enroll in this course as GRE 211. Not offered in 2023-2024
Instructor Cheshire This course focuses on verse celebrations by Pindar (c. 518 - c. 438 BCE) of victories in ancient Greek athletic contests such as the famous games at Olympia and Delphi. A rich trove of mythic lore, these commissioned songs for public performance participated in fascinating constructions of personal, civic, and ethnic identities while at the same time speaking more broadly to humanity’s relationship with the divine, our individual capacity for heroism greater than human, and the very real limitations our mortality imposes upon us. Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major. Counts toward the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory. Satisfies the Language requirement. Prerequisites & Notes GRE 201. Students who have not yet taken a Greek course at the 200 level beyond 201 should enroll in GRE 216. Not offered 2026-2027
Instructor Cheshire We will read Sophocles’ Antigone in Greek, considering along the way not only generic features of Greek tragedy (e.g., dialogue, chorus, metrics, and matters of staging) but also–as the play invites us to!–such matters as deconstruction of gender, conceptions of justice (divine and mortal), the pressures and limits of power, and of course young love. Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Satisfies Classical Languages and Literature major requirement. Satisfies Classical Studies major requirement. Satisfies Greek minor requirement. Satisfies Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor requirement. Prerequisites & Notes Cross-listed with GRE 233. GRE 201 or placement test. Students who have not yet taken a GRE course beyond 201 may enroll in this course as GRE 233. Fall 2026
Instructor Cheshire Socrates, citizen of Athens and one of the most celebrated thinkers in history, was sentenced to death by the democratic government under which he lived. We will not only consider why this happened, but also grapple with the impossible “Socratic Problem,” trying to gain a coherent sense of who Socrates really was. We will read in Greek excerpts from Aristophanes’ Clouds, the comedy that may well have played a role in his execution, and some strikingly different posthumous attempts (by Plato and Xenophon) to rehabilitate Socrates’ reputation. Other more minor evidence for Socrates’ life - some fragmentary - will be read in Greek or English. Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major. Counts towards the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory. Counts towards Greek minor. Prerequisites & Notes GRE 201 or placement test. Not offered in 2026-2027
Instructor Staff Readings and research on Greek texts, under the direction and supervision of a faculty member who reviews and approves the topic(s) and evaluates the student’s work. Prerequisites & Notes Greek 201 or placement test and permission of the instructor.
Instructor Staff Writing of a thesis under the supervision of an appropriate professor. Oral defense before the entire classics faculty required. Admission by unanimous consent of the Department of Classics.
