fall 2007 | winter 2007 | fall 2006 | winter 2006 | courses previously offered by CFC faculty

courses offered fall 2007:

Prof. Jay Reed
Classical Civilizations 120: The Dying God in Myth and Literature
The figure of the dying god (like Adonis, Osiris, or Attis), embodying both beauty and tragedy, has exerted a fascination from ancient times to the present day. His worship was sometimes central to the community; sometimes marginal, yet compelling in its "outsider" status. His myths invited meditations on love and death in various modes from comedy to epic. This course, through the great mythological texts of Greece and Rome as well as modern literature and art, will explore the figure in all its variety, along with Christian adaptations and recent interpretations.

C. Michael Sampson, GSI
English 125.018: 'Western' Greeks and Eastern 'Barbarians' in Antiquity
What did it mean to be `Greek´ or `barbarian´ in the ancient world? Has the relationship between West and East always been one of violence and opposition? To what extent was the rise of Greek (and Western) civilization indebted to Eastern influence? In this writing-intensive course, we will use a variety of documents to investigate significant encounters-both cultural and military, violent and peaceful-between ancient Greece and the East in the first millennium BCE. The goals of the course are to better understand how the ancient Greeks related to the alien cultures with which they were in continual contact, while developing the analytic skills necessary for college writing. The course is structured around three military encounters between the Greeks and the East spanning nearly a millennium: the mythological Trojan War recounted in Homer's Iliad, the Persian War recounted by Herodotus' Histories, and the decade of campaigns undertaken by Alexander the Great. In addition, the course will consider how cultural encounters are represented visually-whether in ancient art, or in contemporary film.

Prof. Lydia Soo
Architecture 518 / History of Art 555: Renaissance Architecture
The course examines the architecture of the Renaissance--the buildings and cities of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy, France, and England--created according to the ideals of the classical style. They will be discussed in relationship to contemporary theoretical writings, addressing issues of function, structure, and beauty, as well as in relationship to the cultural context of the Renaissance, including philosophical, religious, political, economic, and environmental factors.

courses offered winter 2007:

Prof. Arthur Verhoogt
Classical Civilization 385: Greek Mythology
Greek mythology comprises a group of traditional stories that discuss a number of universal themes such as creation, death, gods, heroes, the Other, family feuds, local history, and --not to forget-- sex and cannibalism. In this course we will study the development of these tales in Greek literature and art. Our focus will be on the interplay between myths and ancient society in both its contemporary and modern interpretations.

Prof. Artemis Leontis
Modern Greek 325 (Satisfies Humanities and ULW requirements): Athens Present and Past
Old cities are not just monuments to past glory. They are incubators for new ideas and sites of dynamic change. Athens has  always been a city in transition, from ancient times, when it was a center of art, politics, philosophy, and commerce to the  modern era, when it reemerged as a modern capital city. In this class, we explore Athens neighborhood by neighborhood through its many sources.  We work through important moments in Athens’ long history, as we also make stops at some of the city’s contemporary  hot spots—from the Acropolis to the Plaka and Kolonaki Square to beachfront scenes of Athens’ modern night life—in order to explore the different ways that Athens has reinvented itself.

This is an ISAC (Integrating Study Abroad into the Curriculum) course with an optional study abroad trip to Athens, Greece,  April 30-May 13.  Cost of travel to Greece will be about $800 plus the cost of air travel and some meals.  Eligibility for trip:   The instructor requires students  interested in the study abroad trip to contact her (aleontis@umich.edu) for an interview as  soon as possible.  The Study Abroad trip to Athens is supported through an ISAC grant and the LSA Citizenship Theme  Year.

Prof. Patricia Simons
History of Art 194.001 - First Year Seminar: Visual Representation of Classical Myths
Myths are one way of structuring and explaining the world.  This course explores the ‘after life’ of classical mythologies by focusing on the classical revival of the Renaissance, but we also study the intersection of these traditions with contemporary representations, chiefly in film.  The course aims to familiarize students with a core set of myths, ones narrated in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and which provided a framework for picturing themes like transformation, desire and creativity.  We will combine analysis of literary poetics with close attention to visual literacy.  Through gender analysis, we focus on the construction of masculinity (eg Hercules) and femininity (eg Venus). The very fictionality of myth made it an apt vehicle for the figuring of creativity, here investigated through the stories of Narcissus, Prometheus and Pygmalion.

Prof. Diane Owen Hughes
History 212: Renaissance Europe
This course will explore the political, social, and cultural history of Europe during centuries of momentous change:  scholarship recovered the lost texts and ideas of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds; critical reading of foundational texts produced dramatic questioning of religious authority; art, medicine, and philosophy renewed an interest in the physical and psychological nature of man; scientific calculation put the sun rather than the earth at the center of the universe; exploration made Europeans aware of a wider world; and new technologies made these changes available to a larger public. Lectures will provide a structural approach to the period; discussion sections, close engagement with historical sources.

Prof. Diane Owen Hughes
History 638: Between Worlds
This graduate studies course will consider the position of Europe (1300-1600) as a continent and a culture "between worlds", namely its political and cultural knowledge of and relations with other continents; its sense of the age as ordered according to the authority of an ancient past yet caught up by new discoveries(the renaissance dilemma).  We will look in some detail at ethnographic accounts, the development of new cartographies, changes in historiography, and methods deployed for the dissemination of knowledge.

Prof. Tom Willette
History of Art 351/HUMS 333: The Art and Poetry of Michelangelo
The life and art of Michelangelo Buonarroti offers an exciting context for intensive study of verbal and visual creativity in early modern Europe. For his contemporaries, and for many later generations, Michelangelo exemplified the ideal modern artist postulated in the art literature and cultural theory of Renaissance Humanism. The seminar will examine Renaissance theories of style and invention in order to grasp the rhetorical strategies and poetic "figures" that inform both his rough-hewn sonnets and his eloquent marbles. Hence we will also attend closely to certain drawings that show the artist thinking on paper, in both line sketches and fragments of verse. Other central topics include Michelangelo’s use of classical models, such as the Belvedere Torso and the Laocoön sculpture group, his verbal and visual self-fashioning as a grouchy genius, his Neoplatonic theories of artistic inspiration, his preoccupation with the body as the primary source of visual and verbal metaphors, and the religious contemplation that informed his intense devotion to craft and physical beauty. We will analyze both the language and the genres of his poetry--notably the sonnet, the madrigal and the epitaph--as well as the language and ideas of contemporary critics of his art, such as Giorgio Vasari, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Pietro Aretino and Ludovico Dolce. Close inspection will be made of Michelangelo’s drawing techniques, as well as his use of color and his treatment of stone surfaces, in order to observe the figurative effects of his working of materials (facture). We will study a considerable portion of his production in sculpture, painting and architecture, particularly in the court settings of Medici Florence and Papal Rome, while taking a critical look at the wealth he derived from this work and the linkage of wealth and artistic reputation in the sixteenth century.

Prof. Netta Berlin
Classical Civilization 121: War and Remembrance
This course centers on Homer’s Iliad and its paradigmatic value for military conflict in antiquity and the modern era. The course begins with a close reading of the epic, in particular the dynamic relationship between the narrowly circumscribed subject (“the anger of Achilles”) and the complex narrative that transforms this subject into an evocative and enduring account of war. The remainder of the course considers works in a variety of disciplines (e.g., tragedy, philosophy, psychology) for which the Iliad has provided access to understanding war and its call to remembrance. This course fulfills the first-year writing requirement.

Prof. Jay Reed
Classical Civilization 120: The Dying God in Myth and Literature
The figure of the dying god (such as Adonis, Osiris, or Attis), embodying both beauty and tragedy, has exerted a fascination from ancient times to the present day. His worship was sometimes central to the community, sometimes marginal yet compelling in its “outsider” status; his myths invited meditations on love and death in various modes from comedy to epic. This course, through the great mythological texts of Greece and Rome as well as modern literature and art, will explore the figure in all its variety, along with Christian adaptations and recent interpretations.

Prof. Vivasvan Soni
English 484: Theories of Tragedy
We will read both classical and contemporary theories of tragedy, paying close attention to the changing ways in which theorists have understood the ethical and political value of tragedy. Not only will we develop a more sophisticated understanding of an important literary genre, but we will also acquire a familiarity with a variety of critical approaches to literature and learn how each one addresses literary problems differently. We will read some of the most important texts in the history of literary criticism (Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics, Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy), and explore a variety of contemporary theories, such as Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, postcolonial theory.

Prof. Cynthia Sowers
RC HUMS 315: The Representation of History in the Literature and Visual Arts of Rome
This course will examine the way in which Romans of the imperial period represented to themselves their history and their Empire. These writers hesitated between different narrative models.  Was the Empire divinely ordained as a quasi-aesthetic unfolding of episodes with an origin, a trajectory and a final destiny?  Or was it a concatenation of random events?  Different narrative models provided different opportunities for the writer’s personal engagement, from vigorous participation to philosophic detachment. Writers did more than gather and arrange information; at times they were forced to confront their own direct implication in the events they described.  Opportunities for pride are always welcome, but how does one deal with a story of shame?  Why tell that story in the first place?  Interestingly enough, historical narratives were frequently saturated with myth.  Does ancient myth provide a suitable (or convenient) political cover for an historian with something to hide? How available is ancient myth to opportunistic revision?  Finally, the course will explore the ways in which ethnic, cultural, or political “others” were inserted into the narrative of Roman history.   What role can Jews, Christians, and barbarians play in this story?  Is their presence intended to confirm or disrupt Roman power?  Because this course is interdisciplinary, we will be examining both literature and the visual arts.

Prof. Mira Seo
Comparative Literature 140: Culture of Criticism, Criticism of Culture
This course will examine the function of criticism in society and how criticism is disseminated through cultural production.  We will focus on the poets and critics of democratic Athens (criticism of poetry in the thought of Plato and Aristotle and its relationship to their political philosophies, Aristophanes as a political poet) and compare them with the works of more recent cultural critics such as Robert Warshow, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, as well as contemporary cultural products such as films and novels.  To what extent can cultural criticism define and analyze areas beyond the arts, and how do cultural products such as poetry, literature and film critique contemporary culture?

Prof. Elizabeth Sears
History of Art 655: The Vienna School
Fin-de-siècle Vienna, hub of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a crucible for the emergence of the art historical discipline as we know it.  Seminally important art historians taught at the University of Vienna and held curatorships in Viennese museums: Wickhoff, Riegl, Dvorák, Strzygowski, Von Schlosser, and we will study the writings of each.  Themes to be treated include Viennese pedagogy (structural analysis of form, the use of archival sources), the critique of Semper’s functionalist approach to art, the engagement with modern aesthetics (Hegel, Hildebrandt, Herbart and Croce), the promotion of cross-cultural study, and the recovery of western Kunstliteratur.    An understanding of art historical study in Vienna provides students with conceptual tools for dealing with visual history, as well as a novel perspective on early twentieth-century cultural history.  Graduate students in all fields are welcome.  Reading knowledge of German is recommended.

courses offered fall 2006:

Prof. Netta Berlin
Classical Civilization 120: Lost and Found in the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean has often served as the setting for stories of sea voyages, dramatic shipwrecks, and isolated island life. This course takes students on a journey through the literature of this maritime world, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey and Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Along the way we will travel further a field to examine how overseas exploration and colonialism in the Renaissance are reflected in Shakespeare’s Mediterreanean plays. To end, we will return to the themes of Homeric epic and Sophoclean tragedy as observed through the lens of New World post-colonialism in Derek Walcott’s updated treatments of travellers lost and found in the Mediterranean.

Prof. Vassilis Lambropoulos
Comparative Literature 710: Rebellion
Is it useless to revolt? asked Foucault in 1979.  This course will survey ideas of rebellion in the Western tradition since the aftermath of the 18th-century revolutions. It will examine the political imperatives, ethical dilemmas, social contradictions, and civic responsibilities faced by rebellions as they attempted to change the course of history and establish self-rule.  Examples will be drawn from theater, which has dramatized with special intensity the tragedy of revolution.  Assuming familiarity with Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" and "Julius Caesar," the course will discuss plays with several tragic elements such as Goethe's "Egmont," Schiller's "Robbers," Wordsworth's "Borderers," Musset's "Lorenzaccio," Büchner's "Danton's Death," Pirandello's "Henry IV," James' "Black Jacobins," Sartre's "Dirty Hands," Brecht's "Galileo," Grass' "The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising," Genet's "Balcony," Osborne' "Luther," Weiss' "Marat/Sade," and Stoppard's "Shores of Utopia."  In addition, philosophical readings will cover ideas of rebellion from Marx and Luxenburg to Gramsci, Camus, Arendt, Castoriadis, Foucault, and Negri.  Questions of authority and revolt, oppression and resistance will be paramount.  Students will be encouraged to contribute their own relevant readings from other genres, literary (poetry, fiction) or not (arts, film).

Prof. Yopie Prins
English 140: Women Writers and Classical Myth
In this First Year Seminar, we will consider how and why women writers turn and return to classical mythology to engender new meanings.  We will read and analyze versions of various Greek and Roman myths in a variety of literary genres (poetry, narrative, drama), and there will be an opportunity to write your own creative version of a classical myth.

Profs. Pat Simons and Diane Owen Hughes
History of Art 754/History 798: Histories of Etymology and Genealogy
This course will examine etymological and genealogical continuity but also rupture, investigating the processes in terms of their fictionality and representational strategies.  Stretching over both medieval and early modern materials, chiefly in Western Europe, the seminar queries standard notions of chronological division and instead invites a reconsideration of conventional ideas about origin, influence and filiation. After an overview of theoretical frameworks (Bloch, Butler, Derrida, Foucault), our case studies will be drawn from such subjects as Isidore of Seville’s etymological project, linguistic and archaeological claims for the primacy of Etruscan roots (including Annius of Viterbo’s late fifteenth-century forgeries and those of Curzio Inghirami in the seventeenth century, which also invoke notions of authenticity), the representation of Adam and Eve as the “first parents” after they committed “original sin”, nationalistic myths of Troy (including stories about the origins of the Ottomans), and the productive tension between valorized imitation (visual, political, rhetorical) on the one hand and valued innovation on the other.  Co-taught by Profs Diane Owen Hughes (History) and Pat Simons (History of Art).

Prof. Cynthia Sowers
Residential College HUMS 309: The Heritage of Greece: Art, Literature, Philosophy
This course will examine the confrontation between myth and philosophy that from the 6th century BC on structured the intellectual heritage of Greece. By myth is meant the fables of the poets, primarily Homer. One should not assume that these stories provide a clear window onto ancient religion; instead the relation between mythology and religion was problematic and unstable.   Philosophers, beginning with the presocratics, intervened disruptively in this problematic relation either to magnify the difficulty or to resolve it on their own terms.  Philosophical speculation concerning the nature of space and the role of the gods in shaping or controlling space challenged mythology.  This speculation had implications, sometimes troubling, for ancient religion – especially for the traditional practices of prophecy and sacrifice.  To contest these practices was to challenge the site and expression not only of religious, but also (because of the relation between ancient cult and the state) of political power. Power in the ancient world was concentrated and disseminated by means of images.  Visual objects occupied a cultural category quite different from modern conceptions of “art.”  To what extent were ancient paintings, sculpture or architecture occupied by religious, philosophical or political power?    To explore this question, significant visual works will be studied alongside of the literary, philosophical, and political currents of their day.  Readings will include Homer, “Odyssey:” selections from Early Greek Philosophy; Aeschylus, “Oresteia;” Sophocles, “Antigone;” Euripides, “Hecuba;” Plutarch, “The Decline of the Oracles;”  Anonymous, “Book of Wisdom;” Gregory of Nyssa, “Life of Macrina.”

Prof. Basil Dufallo
Comparative Literature 490: Text and Image: Classical and Neoclassical Articulations
This course will introduce students to the theoretical issues surrounding the relationship between verbal and visual art by concentrating on Greco-Roman antiquity and a specific era from neoclassical modernity (English Gothic or 20th-century American neoclassicism). Course material will include major theoretical texts (e.g. Lessing, Krieger, Mitchell), literary examples of ecphrasis (description of art objects), and visual images.

courses offered winter 2006:

Profs. Hugh Cohen & Frederick Peters
RC Humanities 320: Biblical, Greek, and Medieval Texts and Modern Counterparts
This course examines foundational texts from the Greek, Old Testament, New Testament, and medieval worlds and a number of modern works -- books, essays, and films -- that employ the themes and situations originally set forth in these classical works. First, we examine literature central to the worldview of four cultures that have helped shape and continue to inform modern Western consciousness and art. Our focus is on questions and perspectives concerning the individual's relationship to the divine order, to earthly society, and to the private self that are embodied in such works as (1) Greek literaure: Homer (The Odyssey); Sophocles (Oedipus, Antigone); Euripides (Medea), Plato (The Socratic dialogues); (2) Old Testament (Genesis, Job); (3) New Testament (The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John); (4) medieval literature: Dante (Inferno). In conjunction with these works, we examine, where feasible, modern counterparts (or adaptions or recreations) of the classic stories or conflicts found in these classical texts. We read essays and novels, and view films which deal with the same or similar prennial ideas and conflicts. (We also examine those values and experience expressed in the original works that seem alien to modern consciousness.) Some of the modern works we scrutinize are Roman Polanski's Chinatown, Max Frisch's Homo Faber, Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail", Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. The chief merit of our approach, besides giving the student the opportunity to read exciting stories and view important films, is in the juxtaposing of the old and the new so as to make the student more appreciative of the rootedness in the past of many of our current ideas, problems, and situations.

Prof. Basil Dufallo
Latin 436/MEMS 441: Postclassical Latin II: Topics in Postclassical Latin
In this course students will pursue specific research topics they have developed in Latin 435 or elsewhere in their studies. These may involve close work on individual Medieval Latin or Neo-Latin texts and authors, or broader thematic studies of genres, periods, or literary conventions, but the ultimate form and content of the class will be determined according to student need. The course will be run as a research seminar, with all participants reading texts chosen by the individual students, and a portion of the term devoted to each student’s project. A substantial term paper will be expected. Latin 435 is not a prerequisite for this class, but two previous years of Latin (or equivalent) are required.

Prof. Artemis Leontis
Modern Greek 325: Athens Present and Past
Old cities are not just monuments to past glory; they are incubators for new ideas and sites of dynamic change. Athens has always been a city in transition, from ancient times, when it was a center of art, politics, philosophy, and commerce, to the modern era, when it reemerged as a modern capital city. In this class, we will explore Athens neighborhood by neighborhood through photographs, films, travel descriptions, maps, poetry, plays, political writing, and fictional and non-fictional narrative. We will work through important moments in Athens’ long history, as we also make stops at some of the city’s contemporary hot spots, from the Acropolis to the Plaka and Kolonaki Square to beachfront scenes of Athens’ modern night life, in order explore the different ways that Athens has reinvented itself.

Prof. Arlene Saxonhouse
Political Science 403: Greek Political Thought
Readings from the authors of ancient Greece will help us explore the possible meaning and practice of justice, equality, freedom, and democracy. Works by Homer, Solon, Herodotus, Thucydides, the playwrights, Plato, and Aristotle will form the core of the semester's texts. Political philosophy begins in the world of ancient Athens, and we will use our readings to understand the normative foundations of political regimes (i.e., why one political regime may be more "choiceworthy" than another). The development of political thought in ancient Athens becomes the foundation for the contemporary understanding of the place of politics--especially democratic politics--in our lives.

Prof. Elizabeth Sears
History of Art 344: Early Medieval Kingdoms and Cultures: European Art 400-1000
This course concerns a fascinating period in European history when, after the fall of Rome, waves of invading "barbarians" occupied the lands of the former empire and, as a product of dynamic interchange between cultures, new forms of art and architecture emerged. We will focus on places and times in which distinctive artistic cultures flourished: Britain in the "age of saints," Ostrogothic and Lombard Italy, Visigothic Spain before and after the coming of Islam, Carolingian Europe under Charlemagne and his heirs, Anglo-Saxon England, Mozarabic Spain, and Ottonian Germany. We will consider the function of imagery in specific historical contexts, studying magnificently decorated churches and palaces, elaborately embellished manuscripts, and sumptuous objects produced for patrons with a taste for gold, ivory and gemstones. Overarching themes include early medieval attitudes toward the classical past, European perceptions of Byzantium and Islam, the political use of imagery in early medieval courts, the cult of relics, and theories of the religious image.

Prof. Mira Seo
Comparative Literature 492: Literary Theory: Constructing the Self: Literature, Philosophy, and Society, Ancient and Modern
What did Socrates mean when he said, "Know thyself"? What evidence can we use to analyze how ancient Greeks and Romans conceived the self? How does selfhood relate to character, personality, and literature? This course will explore the concept of the self in ancient and modern thought. We will read Greek and Roman texts in translation, including sections of the Iliad, Greek tragedies such as the Ajax and the Medea, philosophical works from Plato and Aristotle, the Aeneid and sections of the Metamorphoses, Seneca's philosophical and dramatic works, writings by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and ancient literary criticism. Our discussions will also cover scholarship on ancient texts as well as contemporary work in the areas of literary characterization, cognition, and philosophy. Requirements include one 4-5 page paper, one 8-10 page paper, and one class presentation.

Prof. Pat Simons
History of Art 194.001: First-Year Seminar: Visual Representation of Classical Myths
This course explores the ‘after life’ of classical mythologies in both text and image by focusing on the Renaissance, that moment in European history when a ‘classical revival’ reshaped culture. Many of the cultural, political and moral values of classicism are thought to inform the Western world today, so there is great pertinence to studying the intersection of these traditions with contemporary representations also, chiefly in film. The course aims to familiarize you with a core set of classical myths, ones which provided a cultural framework for imagining and picturing such fundamental themes as transformation, desire and creativity. Its interdisciplinary attention to cultural history combines analysis of written texts and literary poetics with close attention to visual literacy. You will receive an introduction to the skills of visual analysis, and you will also be trained in a modicum of gender analysis, as one way in which to reinvigorate understanding of the influential classical tradition. Our chief text will be Ovid’s Metamorphoses; other documents include writings by Petrarch, Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, and Ficino amongst others, as well as works by artists such as Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Titian.

Prof. Pat Simons
History of Art 489.006: Classicism and Mythology
By focusing on classical mythology, this course examines the “cultural revolution” of the Renaissance but also the periodic impact thereafter of classicism in the Euro-American tradition (e.g., Neoclassicism; Disney’s animated Hercules (1997); Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas (2002)). For some, the classical heritage is timeless and grand, about aesthetics rather than politics. Classicizing imagery is thus often considered abstract, sober, intellectual, and “poetic”, in contrast to eliciting particular, humorous, popular, or erotic effects. Rather than continue the mind/body dichotomy, this course remembers the military and hierarchical origins of classicus and rethinks such “culture wars” by concentrating on gender and sexuality. The course also asks whether one can speak of modernity’s “mythlessness” and considers how material and visual culture might play a productive role in the tension between mythos and logos.

Prof. Cynthia Sowers
RC HUMS 314/MEMS 314: Shakespeare and Rome: The Figure of Rome in Shakespeare and 16th Century Painting
In this course we will read a selection of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline, in the light of their ancient sources, especially Ovid, Livy, Plutarch, Caesar, and Augustine. We will ask what the figure of "Rome" means in the context of each play and how that historical reference point is used to frame problems of contemporary import in Shakespeare's own time. As comparison and contrast, we will also examine the reclamation of Rome by artists of the Renaissance and the Counter-reformation, especially Mantegna, Titian, and Caravaggio, in order to make arguments concerning antiquity and memory; martyrdom and authority; and the status of the image. We will complete our study by inquiring how (and why) Renaissance artists, historians, and antiquarians began to construct a pre-Roman paganism: what sources did they use? Was there a political or cultural motive behind this construction?

Prof. Silke-Maria Weineck
German 821: Theory of Myth
Over the past 100 years, theories of myth have been of central importance to the theory of literature and of culture, far beyond the ancient distinction between mythos and logos, and definitions of “myth” have been heavily contested. We will read some of the seminal theoretical work on myth from the history of theory as well as a number of primary texts devoted to specific myths (such as versions of Oedipus, Medea, Sisyphus). Questions to be asked: What is myth? What work does it do? What work does the theory of myth do? What is the place of myth (or kinds of myth) in public discourse and privateexperience? Readings will include (in toto or as excerpts): Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth;” Ernst Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms; Hans Blumenberg, “Work on Myth;” Roland Barthes, Mythologies; James Frazer, “The Fall of Man;” Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy; Rene Girard, Sacred Violence; and others.

Prof. Norman Yoffee
ACABS 592: Mesopotamian Economics
This seminar will survey recent literature on Mesopotamian economy and society. We shall begin by reading edited collections of essays on private economy, urbanization and land ownership, debt and economic renewal, record-keeping and accounting. We'll then read new studies on trade, merchants, monetary systems and prices, interest rates, and other topics. We shall also read new literature on law and legal cases as is related to the economy. We shall attempt to cover the time from the first economic records at the end of the 4th millennium through the Hellenistic period. Students will lead discussion of one essay per week and write a 1-2 page critique of the essay (that will be circulated to the members of the seminar). The only other requirement is a term paper.

courses previously offered by CFC faculty:

Benjamin Acosta-Hughes has taught:

• The City of Alexandria (Classical Civilization 480, Winter 2003 and Winter 2005): The focus of this Capstone Seminar was the city of Alexandria in Greek art, literature, and thought. Founded by Alexander as a Greek city looking out upon the Mediterranean, its presence in Egypt rendered it a multi-cultural metropolis that in many ways prefigures the modern cosmopolitan large city. In the course of the semester we will view this city from a variety of perspectives: as capital of the Ptolemaic kings and center of court patronage; as major port of a vast ancient economy; as cultural image in contemporary and later thought. Primary sources (all in English) included Alexandrian poets, philosophers, satirists, and a variety of voices drawn from many aspects of urban society. Under consideration were how Alexandrians lived, worked, traveled, loved and mourned. A particular focus of this course will be the epigrams, first published in 2001, attributed to the 3rd cent. BCE poet Posidippus, many of which focus on the city, its rulers, its courtiers, and its common people. Students examined the ways a city defines itself and is defined by others.

Vanessa Agnew has taught:

• The Power of Music (German 449, Fall 2004): Music and German culture seem to go together. German and Austrian composers dominate the musical tradition, music philosophers and writers the intellectual one. But why is Germany often thought of as a musical nation and Germans as the "people of music"? This course examined the interrelationship between music and culture from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and asked how this association may have come about. Readings included literary, critical, and philosophical texts by authors such as Brecht, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Thomas Mann, Nietzsche, and Wagner. Listening lists included works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Berg, Haydn, Mahler, Mozart, Schubert, Schönberg, Wagner, and Weill. The course began with 2 books from Ovid's Metamorphoses and then looked at musical settings of the Orpheus, Pan and Phoebus stories.

Netta Berlin has taught:

• War and Remembrance (Classical Civilization 120, First-Year Seminar, Fall 2004 and Fall 2005): This course centered on Homer's Iliad and its paradigmatic value for military conflict in antiquity and the modern era. The course began with a close reading of the poem, in particular the dynamic relationship between the narrowly circumscribed subject ("the anger of Achilles") and the complex narrative that transforms this subject into an evocative and enduring account of war. The remainder of the course considered works in a variety of disciplines (e.g., tragedy, philosophy, psychology) for which the Iliad has provided an access point to understanding war and its call to remembrance.

Catherine Brown has taught:

• Loving Philology (Romance Languages 680, Winter 2003): Philology is a both scholarly discipline and a practice of reading and making knowledge. In European studies, it's been associated especially with Classics, Medieval, and Early Modern studies, with the patient labor of reading, collating and editing manuscripts and early printed books, and the establishment of texts. Philology has also been associated with a positivist resistence to more overtly philosophical or aesthetic ways of working with texts. It does not have to be so, this class will argue. Etymologically, of course, the word's meaning is simple: the love of words, reason, discourse. In this class, we'll study, think about, and practice philology. We'll study its history and the history of the academic institutionalization of literature; we'll study its traditional tenets and practices; we'll think about what we have to learn from philology, in both its disciplinary and etymological senses.

Catherine Brown and Peggy McCracken have team-taught:

• Medieval Lives, Medieval Selves (French 651/Spanish 650, Winter 2005): What's the difference between telling a life and constructing a self, and what difference does history make? This course explored selves, stories, and the place of history through texts from medieval France and Iberia with reference to historical and theoretical interrogations of identity . . . including, of course, the great theoretical interrogator of what it feels like to be a "self," St. Augustine. All texts were available in the original language and in translation.

Anne Carson has taught:

• Workshop on Translation and Other Things You Can Do With Translation (English 407/English 540, Winter 2003): This course is an exploration of methods of making and framing a translation, and then turning the translation into something else: a text, object, installation, or performance. The class is open to graduate students as well as undergraduates and requires a reading knowledge of some language other than English.
• Jealousy 101 (Comparative Literature 436, Winter 2004): This course examined the structures, uses, and representations of this most operatic of emotions—jealousy: real and metaphorical, erotic and religious, in the body and beyond the body, in humans and in gods—and will culminate in a staged reading (by the class) of an opera libretto called Decreation.
• Euripides and Beckett: Experiments in Drama and Depression (English 140, Winter 2004): This course studied a number of the plays of the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides (in English translation) and also a number of the plays, TV scripts, theatrical projects and experimental productions of the 20th-century Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Euripides and Beckett were artists who attempted violent innovations in dramatic form; each has been regarded as either a genius or a really bad playwright or both. Their plays are hard to read? depressing, arguably hopeless? but also often hilarious and at times uplifting. The class explored the intersection of tragedy and comedy and studied how these two dramatists used theatrical invention to negotiate despair.

Hugh Cohen and Frederick Peters have team-taught:

• Biblical, Greek, and Medieval Texts and Modern Counterparts (RC Humanities 320, Winter 2003 and 2004): This course examined foundational texts from the Greek, Old Testament, New Testament, and medieval worlds and a number of modern works -- books, essays, and films -- that employ the themes and situations originally set forth in these classical works. The course first examined literature central to the worldview of four cultures that have helped shape and continue to inform modern Western consciousness and art. The class focused on questions and perspectives concerning the individual's relationship to the divine order, to earthly society, and to the private self that are embodied in such works as (1) Greek literaure: Homer (The Odyssey); Sophocles (Oedipus, Antigone); Euripides (Medea), Plato (The Socratic dialogues); (2) Old Testament (Genesis, Job); (3) New Testament (The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John); and (4) medieval literature: Dante (Inferno). In conjunction with these works, the seminar examined modern counterparts (or adaptions or recreations) of the classic stories or conflicts found in these classical texts. Readings included essays and novels, and students viewed films that deal with the same or similar prennial ideas and conflicts. Students also examined those values and experience expressed in the original works that seem alien to modern consciousness. Some of the modern works scrutinized were Roman Polanski's Chinatown, Max Frisch's Homo Faber, Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. The chief merit of the course's approach, besides giving the student the opportunity to read exciting stories and view important films, was in juxtaposing the old and the new so as to make the student more appreciative of the rootedness in the past of many of our current ideas, problems, and situations.
  

Derek Collins has taught:

• Witchcraft: An Introduction to the History and Literature of Witchcraft (Classical Civilization 381/Religion 381, Fall 2002), which explored witchcraft as a cultural phenomenon and surveyed the theories that have been advanced to explain it. The course focused on many examples of Classical and medieval witchcraft, magic, and demonology in history and literature, with an emphasis on the pre-modern history of official attitudes toward witchcraft in Europe and especially the changing views of secular and religious authorities toward witchcraft in the late medieval period.
• Greek Mythology (Classical Civilization 385, Fall 2005). The aim of this course was to introduce students to the principal Greek myths. We also moved beyond narrative to consider the different media through which classical myths were interpreted, including epic, drama, sculpture, and painting. The myths were seen to rehearse the central religious, cultural, and political concerns of ancient Greek (and later, Roman) society. As such they give us greater insight into the reasons for both ancient and contemporary forms of mythmaking, since thinking in mythical terms is a cultural process that continues today.

Basil Dufallo has taught:

• Text and Image in Latin Poetry (Latin 497/Greek 497, Fall 2003): The description of art objects (ekphrasis), is responsible for many passages of great aesthetic beauty in Latin poetry and is an important way that the Latin poets seek to emulate their Greek predecessors. Yet far more than aesthetics and literary tradition is at stake in describing art at Rome. The display and appreciation of art often has major social, political, and cultural implications as well. Poetry is a key medium for showing and telling Romans about art precisely because it helps invest the aesthetic world with social, political, and cultural power. In this course we will read some of the best-loved poetry of canonical authors such as Catullus, Vergil, and Propertius, as well as lesser-known work by authors such as Statius. We will refer often to visual art objects and to modern theories of the relationship between texts and images in an attempt to understand the full import of the poetry we read.
• Medieval Latin II: Topics in Postclassical Latin (Latin 436, Winter 2005): In this course students pursued specific research topics they developed in Latin 435 or elsewhere in their studies involving close work on individual Medieval Latin or Neo-Latin texts and authors, or broader thematic studies of genres, periods, or literary conventions, but the ultimate form and content of the class was determined according to student need. The course was run as a research seminar, with all participants reading texts chosen by the individual students, and a portion of the term devoted to each student's project.
• Language and Healing: Ancient and Modern Perspectives (Comparative Literature 770, Fall 2005). This class examined ancient and modern accounts of language’s healing power. We began by considering the views of Greco-Roman authors such as Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Ovid, then turned to three 20th-century phenomena: psychoanalysis, responses to the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Texts included poetry, philosophy, Freud’s case-studies, at least one novel, and transcripts. Among our central concerns were differing perspectives on oral vs. written language, the role of performance in the healing process, language’s access (or lack thereof) to the interior person, and personal vs. communal healing.

Sara Forsdyke has taught:

• The Spartan Mirage: Images of Sparta from Antiquity to the Present (First-Year Seminar, Winter 2002), which explored the ways that the image of Sparta has changed over time in order to discuss the ways that the ancient past has been used (and abused) as a positive and negative example for different people in different time periods.

Benjamin Fortson has taught:

• Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (Classical Linguistics 635, Fall 2005). How did Greek and Latin come to be Greek and Latin? This course provided some answers to this question by tracing the development of the two Classical languages back to their earliest recoverable prehistoric origins and setting them in the broader context of the family of languages to which they belong, Indo-European. The course showed how related languages such as Sanskrit, Hittite, Old Irish, and English can allow us to explain the structure and behavior of Greek and Latin phonology, morphology, and syntax. Some archaic texts in Greek, Latin, and the ancient dialects of Italy were examined as well.

Bruce Frier has taught:

• Roman Family Law (Classical Civilization 478, Winter 2003 and 2004): During the past two decades, our understanding of the Roman family has been revolutionized by scholars who have sharply questioned the realism of the law that governed these families. Roman law is uncompromising in two main respects: marriage is not only easy to enter, but easy to end, to such an extent that the marriage bond appears too weak to be socially sustainable; on the other hand, the male head of the Roman household (paterfamilias) has such absolute power over his descendants, no matter their age, as to make them seem little more than his servants.  Modern historians have critically reexamined whether these sources amount to what they seem, particularly when they are juxtaposed with literary sources describing Roman private life.  This course will take up the debate, allowing students to decide for themselves regarding a lively and on-going dispute.  In the process, students will learn how to think about the social implications of legal sources, an issue of some significance also in the modern world.

Elaine Gazda has taught:

• Classicisms in Western Art (History of Art 394.002, Fall 2005). This course examined varying conceptions of what is “Classical” and how these conceptions were expressed visually at select moments in the history of western art, beginning with the Greek fifth century BC. We confronted the question of why the art and architecture of the Greek and Roman worlds had such an enormous impact on the visual, intellectual, and political environments of Europe and the United States. Focusing initially on Periclean Athens and Augustan Rome, the course considered Classical revivals that occurred in the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Europe and in the 18th-, 19th-, 20th-, and 21st- centuries in Europe and the United States. In each instance political, intellectual, and aesthetic motivations for looking to the Classical past informed our discussions. Case studies included, among others, Florence of the Medici, Thomas Jefferson’s America, Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, and Greece of the 2004 Olympics.

Farouk Grewing has taught:

• First-year Seminar in Classical Civilization (Humanities, Classical Civilization 120.002, Fall 2005). This class studied the extant Greek novels by Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, and Heliodorus as well as the two Roman novels by Petronius (the Satyricon) and Apuleius (the Golden Ass). We discussed characterization, suspense / narrative variety (vs. boredom / repetition), pathos, etc. Also, we tried to assess the genre more generally: typologically (What are the constituents of an ancient novel?); literary-historically (the origins of the genre; influence of, e.g., epic, tragedy, historiography); levels of intent (mere entertainment such as soap opera? literary qualities?); potential readership; etc. We also looked at the reception of the genre in modern times (Shakespeare, Voltaire, C.S. Lewis, Fellini, etc.).

Melanie Grunow Sobocinski has taught:

• Museum Practice Seminar 1 (Dearborn Campus, Art History 410, Winter 2005): In this course, students were involved in the planning and organization of the upcoming exhibition "Detroit and Rome" (31 October to 2 December 2005 at the Berkowitz Gallery on the UM-Dearborn campus). The exhibition explored parallels in the urban histories of Detroit and Rome, with a focus on the creative adaptation of buildings to new uses.

David Halperin has taught:

• Platonic Love, Ancient and Modern (English 317, Winter 2000)
• Topics in Literary Studies: Ancient Greece/Modern Gay Identity (English 313, Winter 2002), which examined the status of homosexuality in ancient Greece within relevant cultural contexts and considered if and how understandings of ancient Greek sexual attitudes and practices might have to offer queer politics or queer culture today.
• English 313: Ancient Greece/Modern Gay Identity (English 313, Winter 2004, Winter 2005, and Fall 2005): For centuries, homosexually-inclined women and men have looked to ancient Greece for a prestigious example of a society that not only tolerated but even celebrated same-sex love and desire. Even today, ancient Greece, as well as ancient Greek authors such as Sappho or Plato, continue to represent important sources of lesbian and gay pride. But what did such authors actually say, and what exactly did the Greek approval of homosexuality come down to? Was ancient Greece really a world without homophobia? What was the relation between the ancient Greek acceptance of some kinds of homoerotic behaviors and other features of ancient Greek society, such as slavery or the subordination of women? What are the political stakes in different interpretations of ancient Greek sexual life and what, if anything, does an understanding of ancient Greek sexual attitudes and practices have to offer queer politics or queer culture today? In an effort to answer these and other questions, readings in modern English translation included a wide selection of ancient Greek (and a few Roman) texts that deal with same-sex love, desire, gender dissidence, and sexual behavior. Some of these texts are classics, so to speak; others are almost unknown. We will also read some modern scholarship on the topic. The course concluded by studying some recent writing by lesbian and gay male authors that focuses on ancient Greece and that indicates the range of possible re-uses of ancient Greek materials by modern lesbian and gay male culture. Readings included selections from Homer, Sappho, Sophocles, Plato, Lysias, Aeschines, Nossis, Strato, Ovid, and Seneca; also, James Merrill, Olga Broumas, Mary Renault, Mark Merlis, Frank Bidart, Marguerite Yourcenar.
  

Sharon Herbert has taught:

• Introduction to Greek Archaeology (History of Art 221, Fall 2005). The ancient Greeks are always with us, in high places and low, from the halls of our democratic institutions to the pages of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. How can we explain their ubiquitous presence in our lives? Why won’t they go away? This course explored the art and archaeology of ancient Greece, beginning in the Bronze Age (the famous Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations) through to Hellenistic times (the age of Alexander the Great). We explored all aspects of Greek life as reflected in the materials they left behind, objects that range from mighty marble temples such as the Parthenon, to discarded drinking vessels from their parties, from cities to theaters, from houses to palaces. Such artistic and archaeological evidence allows us to consider how Greek society worked, and how they understood the relations of humans and gods, men and women, Greeks and barbarians.

Richard Janko has taught:

• Ancient Literary Criticism (Latin 669/Greek 669, Fall 2003): This course will focus on the literary-critical poems of Horace and their sources (i.e., the Ars Poetica and Literary Epistles as defined by N. Rudd's edition), observing how Horace tranforms Hellenistic literary-critical material to his own poetic purposes. As essential background we will first study Aristotle's Poetics and literary-critical fragments and extracts from the On Poems of Philodemus, through whom the tradition was passed to Horace.

Andreas Kalyvas has taught:

• Introduction to Political Theory (Political Science 101, Fall 2003): This course will examine the origins and development of Western political thought. It will focus on the normative foundations of political theory, the attempts to distinguish among different regime-types with an emphasis on democratic politics, its defenders and critics, the transformations brought about by the rise of Christianity, the tide of secularization opened up by the Renaissance and the Reformation, the debate between the ancients and the moderns, and finally the emergence of the modern state.

Nita Kumar has taught:

• Modernities and Postcolonialities (History 684, Winter 2005): This graduate course examined mainstream and parallel, or alternative, modernities, comparing the cases of England & the United States and South Asia. It also examined the relationships of colonialism, and of various possible postcolonialities, to modernities. Topics revolved around the constructions of the modern through history, science, religion, the family, education, the arts, and everyday life. Texts included those that reflect on the classical bases of Western modernity, those that critique the particular position of the West versus the rest, and those that make efforts to dislodge the West from the center and restore the margins.

Vassilis Lambropoulos has taught:

• The Adventures of Odysseus through the Centuries (Comparative Literature 240, Fall 1999) as a survey of Odysseus from Homer and Vergil to Walcott and Atwood.
• Introduction to Theory: Introduction to Interpretation through Readings of Antigone (Comparative Literature 600, Winter 2000, Fall 2000, and Fall 2002) as a survey of approaches to Sophocles' Antigone from Hegel and Kierkegaard to Castoriadis and Butler.
• Greek-American Culture (Modern Greek 318), which considered both American Hellenism and Greek immigrants' appeals to it to overcome prejudice and discrimination.
• Literature and Other Arts: Myth and Cinema: Greece Without Columns, Greeks Without Monsters (Comparative Literature 382, Winter 2002 and Fall 2003): Cinema has often tried to depict the Greek gods, heroines, and lands in the same terms as the ancients talked about them. But it has also often tried to update them and bring them closer to our own reality. What happens when films adapt Greek tales to modern times? When Medea, Antigone, and Electra appear in South Africa, Poland, or Tunisia? When Orpheus, Ulysses, and Oedipus suffer in the American South, Yugoslavia, or Italy? This course examined the uses of Greek myth in movies that remove the stories from their original setting and take them to different lands and times. Accordingly, readings included not only ancient material but also modern literature that transforms myths in radicallly modern terms. The goal of the course is to examine the mutually reinforcing overlap between myth, literature, and cinema. The movies have neither columns nor monsters, but they show how fate can still turn us all into wandering, questioning Greeks.
• Comparative Literature 240: Greek Myth in Modern Literature and Cinema (Comparative Literature 240, Fall 2004): This course surveyed the uses of Greek myth in modern plays, novels, and movies that remove the stories from their original setting and take them to different lands and periods. The goal was to examine the overlap among myth, literature, and cinema. The books and the movies have neither columns nor monsters, but they show how fate can still turn us all into passionate, skeptical Greeks. By following the travels and transformations of mythical figures (such as Orpheus, Oedipus, Antigone, Medea, Agamemnon, and Electra) through the centuries, the course introduces students to the comparative study of literature across different cultures, languages, and genres.

Artemis Leontis has taught:

• Modern Greece: Between Antiquity and Modernity (Classical Civilization 121, Winter 2000)
• Introduction to Modern Greek Culture (Modern Greek 214, Fall 2002, Fall 2004, and Fall 2005): Discover Greece, a country with a long history and a vibrant present. Famed for its antiquity, Greece has been adapting rapidly to a changing world. Two hundred years ago it was a backwater of the Ottoman Empire and a favorite stop for European travelers in the Mediterranean. In the years following, many venerated traditions submitted to modern ways. This course acquainted students with breakthrough moments in modern Greek history and helps them to explore characteristics of Greek society. We will look at elements of Greece's political, social, religious, artistic, and popular culture. Sources are stories, films, poems, dances, music, works of art, newspaper articles, and historical archives.
• Travels to Greece (Comparative Literature 340/Modern Greek 340, Winter 2003 and 2004): What inspires people to travel? What is the allure of Greece, and what happens to expectations once people reach this popular destination? Why do people take to the road in the first place, abandoning the comforts of home and routine? This course explores travels to Greece: visits to islands, mountains, villages, ancient sites as they are described in travel narratives. It leads readers from the Ionian Islands to Sparta and Attica, on to Northern Greece and the Aegean, conjuring up the history and mythology, civilization and wildness, heat and beauty that have lured writers from Homer to Byron, Flaubert to Freud, Mark Twain to Henry Miller, Virginia Woolf to Patricia Storace. Centuries of travel have produced volumes of travel writing. At its best, travel literature is exciting and thought provoking as it conveys both an exterior voyage to foreign lands and an interior voyage of self-discovery. At its worst, it betrays travelers' worst ingrained prejudices. The course also raises questions about the relations of travelers to the worlds they encounter but also the interior world they sometimes set out to discover. Questions about the relations of the traveler's words to the world encountered arise at every turn. How much of what people write about their travel destination is based on naive romanticization, exoticization, or other inherited representational legacies? Is travel a broadening experience? What advantage of perspective does distance give? Besides travel essays, short stories, diaries, essays, letters, poems, films, paintings, drawings, and photographs are rich sources of exploration.

Sabine MacCormack has taught:

• Time, Land and Labor in the Ancient and Late Antique Western Roman Empire, which examined the nature of work on the land, and attitudes to it, from the later Roman republic to late antiquity.
• Classical Traditions in Europe and the Americas (Classical Civilization 481/Studies in Religion 380, Fall 2001), which analyzed what concepts such as tradition, culture, society and person, have meant across time and space, and within the framework of the legacy of Greek and Roman antiquity to our own time.
• Virtue, the Gods, and God in Cicero, Varro, Vergil and Augustine (Latin 851, Winter 2002), which examined such texts as Cicero's Tusculanae, De Finibus, and De natura deorum ; Varro's Antiquitates and De lingua Latina; Vergil's Georgics and Aeneid; and Augustine's De civitate Dei.

Peggy McCracken has taught:

• Dante's Divine Comedy (Italian 333, Winter 2004): This course was devoted to a reading of The Divine Comedy. The poem was read in all its three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, in facing-page translation in order to benefit those who know some Italian as well as those who do not. One focus of the course was on Dante's reworking of classical literary traditions.
  

Kate Mendeloff has taught:

• Greek Tragedy and Modern Adaptations: Theatre of War ( RC Humanities 481, Winter 2003): This course offers students the unique opportunity to explore some of the greatest anti-war plays in the context of contemporary war situations. We will explore Sophocles's Philoctetes and Euripides's The Trojan Women in adaptations that evoke the aftermath of Vietnam and Bosnia. We will also be looking at the immediate environment of war in many places around the globe and finding parallels to further explore creatively. Students with an interest in classics, acting, directing, design, playwrighting and contemporary politics are all encouraged to enroll.

Lisa Nevett has taught:

• The Art and Archaeology of Greek Colonization (History of Art 443, Fall 2003): Movements of people between different parts of the world and the consequent meeting of contrasting cultures are a familiar aspect of modern society. But what about the Greek world? How much did Greeks travel and live outside Greece itself? Where did they go? What did they find when they got there? What kind of settlements did they build? And how different was colonial society from the society of Greece itself?
• The Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Greek Oikos (History of Art, Fall 2003): Many of our most vivid images of the Greek world are to be found in the numerous secenes on painted pottery, which appear to show not great battles or civic occasions, but the minutiae of everyday life--a world enclosed within the walls of the oikos. Can these images be taken at face value, or do they need more careful interpretation?
• At Home with the Greeks and Romans (Classical Archaeology 396, Junior Honors Seminar, Winter 2004): All of us have a home, whether it consists of a whole house or a single room, and most of us have strong views about how our home should be furnished and decorated. We all know that entering into someone else's house can reveal much about his or her character. In the same way, studying the physical remains of domestic buildings (including their decoration and furnishings) reveals much about the behaviour and character of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The course tackled a series of topics, starting with the emergence of private housing in the Greek Dark Ages (10th and 9th centuries B.C.) and moving forward in time through the Classical and Hellenistic periods, looking at housing from sites such as Athens, Olynthos, Pella, and Delos. Questions raised included how and why the organisation and decoration of houses changed so dramatically over a relatively short time, and what the remains of houses tell us about broader issues such as the character of the Greek economy and the nature of social relationships. We then moved on to compare the Greek core with the diaspora areas, using the evidence from sites such as Himera in Sicily, Euesperides (Bengazi) in Libya. The second half of the course covered households in various areas of the Roman world, starting with Italy itself (Rome, Pompeii and Herculaneum, Ostia), and move outwards to look at contrasting groups of evidence from some of the provinces, including North Africa (Dougga, Bulla Regia, Volubilis, Timgad and especially, the Michigan excavations at Karanis in Egypt) and the Greek East (Ephesos, Doura Europos, Antioch). Questions raised included the extent to which it is possible to talk about a standardized "Roman house" and the degree to which housing in different areas provides evidence for the continuity of indigenous cultural traditions.

Diane Owen-Hughes has taught:

• Death and Burial in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (History 396, Fall 2003): This colloquium will examine the continuing dynamic within European mourning rites and commemorative practices between a pagan sense of the finality of death and a Christian celebration of death as birth into a better life through a study of burial customs and funerary rituals during this period. We will try to measure the ways in which a persistent need to commemorate the dead transformed Christian religious practice in the Middle Ages and how, by the Renaissance, the rejection of ancient mourning rites became a measure of civilization.
• The History of Renaissance Florence (History 412/MEMS 414, Fall 2003): A study of the transformation of a medieval city into the center of Renaissance style and culture, a focus of this course wil be the ways in which Classical texts and Classical forms were rediscovered, interpreted, and deployed as enabling devices for the creation of a new politics and a new society.

Alexandra Pappas has taught:

• Problems in Greek Archaeology: Intersections of Word and Image in the Ancient Greek World (Classical Archaeology/History of Art 890, Winter 2005): This seminar focused on material and literary contexts in ancient Greece where words and images directly interact. The course examined the complicated relationship between the two media from the archaic through the hellenistic periods, noting in some cases a complementary dynamic, and in others an antagonistic one. Readings included archaic and classical inscriptions -- on pots, statues, and buildings -- in their full aesthetic contexts, combining art historical and archaeological perspectives to contextualize the epigraphy. Questions asked included how these inscriptions and the objects they inscribe reflect contemporary anxieties about modes of communication: does a physical monument or a commemorative poem better communicate a patron's kleos? Literary passages that describe physical objects (ekphrases) and comparisons of inscribed epigrams to purely literary ones also guided inquiry since these contexts blend the technai of author and artisan in important ways. As the seminar explored these and related topics, students also reevaluated the strict distinctions between the literary and visual arts, having explored how each adopts and adapts the communicative strategies typically employed by the other.

Jeff Parsons has taught:

• Regional Archaeology (Anthropology 691, Winter 2005): This seminar considered the following interrelated questions: What is a region? What are the appropriate questions that anthropological archaeologists can and should ask of regional data? How should archaeologists collect regional-level data? How should archaeologists analyze regional-level data? How should archaeologists interpret regional-level data? How good a job have archaeologists done in regional-level research? Where should we go from here? This course is intended for graduate students in archaeology, although advanced undergraduate students in anthropology may also qualify.

Frederick Peters has taught:

• The Western Mind in Revolution: Six Interpretations of the Human Condition (RC Humanities 275, Fall 2004): This course will treat six major reinterpretations of the human condition from the 16th to the 20th centuries generated by intellectual revolutions in astronomy (Copernicus: the heliocentric theory) theology (Luther: the Reformation), biology (Darwin: evolution of the species), sociology (Marx: Communism), psychology (Freud: psychoanalysis), and physics (Einstein: the theory of relativity). Greek precursors to Copernicus and Darwin will receive substantial attention. All six reinterpretations initiated a profound revaluation of Western concept of the self as well as a reassessment of the nature and function of his/her political and social institutions. Since each of these revolutions arose in direct opposition to some of the most central and firmly accepted doctrines of their respective ages, we will study: 1) how each thinker perceived the particular 'truth' he sought to communicate; 2) the problems entailed in expressing and communicating these truths; and 3) the traumatic nature of the psychological upheaval caused by these cataclysmic transitions from the past to the future - both on the personal and cultural level. If the function of humanistic education is to enable the individual to see where he/she stands in today's maelstrom of conflicting intellectual and cultural currents, it is first necessary to see where others have stood and what positions were abandoned. The emphasis of this course will not be upon truths finally revealed or upon problems forever abandoned, but rather upon certain quite definite perspectives that, arising out of specific historical contexts, at once solved a few often technical problems within a specialized discipline while unexpectedly creating many new ones for Western culture as a whole.

James I. Porter has taught:

• Classical Traditions and History of Interpretation (with Sally Humphreys, Graduate Seminar in History and Classics, Fall 1998)
• On the Soul: Plato, Lucretius, Freud (Graduate Seminar in Comparative Literature, Winter 2000)
• Topics in Theory: Value and Valuation (Comparative Literature 600, Winter 2001), which explored the intersection of literature, aesthetics, and the discourse of value in the sphere of culture. Problem areas discussed included beauty, the sublime, literary value, moral value, political economy, classical values and classicism, canonicity, the anthropology of value, and the emergence of criticism (evaluation) as a cultural and professional category.
• Reading Homer/Reading Culture (Comparative Literature 490, Winter 2002), which explored the enduring attraction to the Homeric epic po ems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the monumentality of which seems to be an effect of less their quality as great works of literature than their role as cultural icons, as signifiers of value, and as landmarks in the evolving relationship between literature and culture.
• Ovid, Selections (Latin 439, Winter 2002), an introduction to Ovid's Metamorphoses.
• Comparative Literary Form and Genre: Nietzsche and Tragedy (Comparative Literature 362/Classical Civilization 386, Winter 2003): This course will offer an introduction to one of the most innovative modern thinkers on Greek tragedy. The core of the course will be formed around Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, or, Hellenism and Pessimism , with supplementary readings by Nietzsche from around the time (1872) and excerpts from his later writings on the Greeks and on Greek tragedy. By way of background we will read and discuss a handful of Greek plays (Prometheus Bound, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Euripides' Bacchae), and we will also look at ancient and contemporary literature written on (or against) Nietzsche and Nietzschean themes (for example, on the ritual origins of Greek tragedy, Dionysianism, catharsis theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural criticism), including short selections from Plato, Aristotle, Wilamowitz, Jacob Bernays, Walter Burkert, Freud, Lacan, Jonathan Lear, and Bernard Williams, as well as a book called Nothing To Do With Dionysus?.
• Topics in Theory: Value and Evaluation (Comparative Literature 600, Fall 2003): The first part of a two-part introductory sequence to Comparative Literature, this course will explore the intersection of literature, aesthetics, and the discourse of value in the sphere of culture. Conceived as providing a foundation for future study in any number of disciplines both within and beyond comparative literature, the seminar is intended for anyone interested in any one or all three of these elements. Problem areas to be discussed will include beauty, the sublime, literary value, moral value, political economy, Classical values and Classicism, canonicity, the anthropology of value, and the emergence of criticism (evaluation) as a cultural and professional category. Readings will be drawn from various places, including Aristophanes, Aristotle, Epicurus, Longinus, Spinoza, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant, Marx, M. Arnold, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Mukarovsky, T.S. Eliot, Wittgenstein, Adorno, Althusser, Barbar Herrnstein Smith, Bourdieu, Eagleton, Appadurai, Baudrillard, Guillory, Carson, Said, Scarry, and Nehamas.
• Varieties of Pleasure in Greece and Rome (Winter 2004): This is a seminar meant for exploring (together) and for elaborating on a point, or rather on a nexus of concerns (mine). The territory will be defined by two interlocking questions: How did the ancients conceive, name, contest, value, divide up, experience, and claim their pleasures? and, What was the cultural work that pleasure did for them? There are no obvious borders here, and the exact shape of the course will depend upon who participates in it. To get at these questions we will want to follow a trajectory that leads from (say) the Sirens in the Odyssey to the Sirens of the Second Sophistic, and covering some obvious stopping points in literature, art, literary and aesthetic criticism and description, philosophy, periegetic literature, paradoxology, and so on, with key concepts that will include hedonism, entertainment, ecstasy, the sublime, pleasure vs. pain, the pleasures and phenomenology of cultural identity (being Greek or Roman), pleasures as popular and elite markers in high and low culture, etc. The course should appeal to anyone interested in any of these or similar areas, and in a new way of getting at cultural history generally. Along the way expect to read a couple of recent or contemporary works (in selection) on how we conceive of pleasure today, mainly just to provoke our own thinking and to develop a common vocabulary for getting at so elusive an idea as pleasure, in addition to some secondary literature on targeted ancient materials (to be read selectively and in the original). Part of the challenge, and I hope pleasure, will be to see how many different varieties of pleasure we can discover together: what are the differences between hêdonê, terpsis, psuchagôgia, ekstasis, euphrosunê, gargalizein, delectatio, gaudium, voluptas, suavitas, blanditia, titillatio, etc.?
  The decision about which approaches to pleasure we take can be left wide open until we meet; an eventual syllabus will result from our first couple of meetings. But I do expect to draw attention to a few themes that I’ve been developing in my own recent work and for which I know of no ready-made theories, including the idea of public pleasure—pleasure that is culturally shared and significant, and not simply private, for instance in the form of cultural memories or political and social identities; forms of classicism (in all media) as pleasurable ways of reliving or enforcing (canonical views of) the past; and the pleasures of flourishing, individually and collectively (the ethics of pleasure and the pleasures of self-cultivation). Behind all of these is the fact that pleasure is closely linked to value: it is a way of determining, fixing, and exhibiting whatever is felt to be of value to an individual or a collectivity. The most general suggestion I want to develop in the class is this (but feel free to dispute it): Cultures are held together as much by regimes of pleasure as they are by regimes of force or coercion (including the coercion of convention). Pleasure is thus an important ideological tool that helps cement consensus and to smooth over fundamental inconsistencies in a field of public perceptions, beliefs, and assumptions. That is, what we find pleasurable is not always a matter of personal decision but often of social pressure. And so too, a history of sensations (experiences and feelings, however inarticulate they may be) is a viable method of understanding the past. We'll stop short of musing on the kinds of satisfaction that doing classics provides us with today (but for that, see, e.g., Michael Shanks, Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology, 1992, and my "The Materiality of Classical Studies" in Parallax (De-Classifying Hellenism: Cultural Studies and the Classics, ed. Karen Bassi and Peter Euben), 9.4 (2003) 64-74.
  
• Socrates and Nietzsche (Comparative Literature 385/Classical Civilization 376, Winter 2004): An introduction to Socrates and Nietzsche, organized around the method of inquiry into ethical truth (truth about one’s self and one’s community) that was coined by Socrates and later challenged and modified by Nietzsche. Topics: the "invention"of Socrates; the Socratic method; dialogue and dialogism; care of the self and self-fashioning. Readings: Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon, Lucian, Diderot, Nietzsche, Bakhtin, Derrida, Foucault, Hadot, and Nehamas.
• Homer and the Culture Wars (Comparative Literature 490, Winter 2005): The Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, have been "required reading" in Western culture from its first beginnings. Although a complete mystery in so many respects (their date and authorship are unknown; they resemble more a tradition than a text; they are blemished with imperfections), their literary influence has been vast, from Sappho and Greek tragedy to James Joyce's Ulysses and Derek Walcott's Homeros. What are the reasons for this enduring attraction? This course explored the monumentality of these two poems -- less their quality as great works of literature than their role as cultural icons, as signifiers of value, and as landmarks in the evolving relationship between literature and culture. Both poems were read selectively by way of background, but our main focus will be on Homer's place -- the very idea of Homer -- in the culture wars of early modernity (the Quarrel between Ancients and Moderns), in the 19th century, and today. The course served as a study in the intellectual and cultural history of value, rather than literature per se, with Homer as guide.
• The Art of Aesthetics (Classical Civilization 120, Winter 2005), an introduction to classical aesthetics. How did the Greeks and Romans conceive of aesthetic problems (beauty, sublimity, or their opposites), and what vocabularies did they have at their disposal? To ask the question, one first has to have a sense of how we approach these questions today. Consequently, course readings included a mix of modern and ancient materials, beginning with an exploration of the first coinages of the term aesthetics in the 18th century and then moving forward to contemporary discussions, such as John Armstrong's The Secret Power of Beauty (2004). Then students examined antiquity to look at what the ancients had to say about aesthetic objects and experiences in various media (literature, sculpture, painting) from Homer to Plato, Pliny, and Lucian. The course was open to anyone interested in pursuing the question of why beauty might matter to us, or alternatively, why simply to ask the question has mattered to cultures present and past.

Yopie Prins has taught:

• Greek Drama in Modern Performance (Comparative Literature 241, Winter 1995 and Winter 1996)
• Sappho and the Lyric Tradition (Comparative Literature 434, Winter 1998)
• Women Writers and Classical Myth (Comparative Literature 140, Fall 2000)
• Women Writers and Classical Myth (Comparative Literature 241, Winter 2003): This course asked why 20th-century women writers (re)turn to Classical mythology and how they (re)write particular myths to engender new meanings. Among the writers considered were Louise Gluck, H.D., Rita Dove, Marguerite Yourcenar, Christa Wolf, Adrienne Kennedy, and Anne Carson. In addition to learning how to read different forms of literature (fiction, poetry, translation, drama), students developed their skills in literary criticism by writing a series of short papers. They also had the opportunity to write their own creative version of a Classical myth.
• Classical Translations/Translating Classics (Greek/Latin 731 and Comparative Literature 731, Winter 2005): This seminar explored how translation has shaped the reception and transmission of Classics, from antiquity to the present. Among the topics for consideration are the history, theory, and practice of translating Greek and Latin texts in various cultural contexts; genealogies of influential translations and translators; close readings of translated texts, forms of metrical translation, and modes of intertextuality; creative translation and imitation; translation and/in performance; teaching Classics in translation; pedagogical practices, cultural politics, critical debates, and rhetorical traditions associated with translating Classics; translation as a theoretical model for new developments in the field of Classical reception studies. Literary readings included translations of Homer, Sappho, Catullus, Ovid, and Classical drama but (depending on the particular interests of students participating in the seminar) it will also be possible to consider the translation of other kinds of Classical texts (e.g., in history, science, philosophy, politics). To rethink the relationship between Classics and Translation Studies from a wide range of perspectives, the seminar was open to students from Classics, Comparative Literature, English literature,and other literature departments, and related disciplines such as Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Modern Greek, Anthropology, History, Art History, as well as creative writing and the visual/performing arts. Students had the opportunity to work on readings related to their exam lists and other research/creative projects. Knowledge of Classical languages welcome but not required.

Sara Rappe has taught:

• Theorizing Women in Antiquity (Classics and Women's Studies, Winter 2001)

Amit Ron has taught:

• Development of Political Thought: Ancient to Modern (Political Science 301, Fall 2005). Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance political philosophy laid the foundations for the Western understanding of politics. We closely read and discussed some of the main texts from these periods focusing in particular on questions of justice, political institutions, democratic (and non-democratic) politics, and political struggle. In reading these texts we focused on two additional general themes. The first theme asks how we should read texts in political philosophy. We asked ourselves questions such as whether the form of the text matters (does a text written as dialogue perform a different political task than one written as a monologue)? What is the role of metaphors in political texts? Does knowledge of the social context in which the text was written help us better understand the text? The second theme asks what, if anything, we can learn from the ancients. Throughout the course, we asked ourselves whether, why, and how these ancient writings are of any relevance for us (are the arguments that they made still valid today? would it be possible to reinvigorate elements of Athenian democracy? would it be desirable?).

Arlene Saxonhouse has taught:

• Democratic Theory (Political Science 604), which examined the political thought of ancient Athens, considered the changes in democratic theory when one turns to the modern world, and investigated familiar concepts such as justice, equality, liberty, community, and democracy.
• The History of Political Thought To the Early Modern Period (Political Science 301, Fall 2003): The aim of this course is two-fold: 1.) to give the student a sense of the history of political thought from the ancient Greek period to the end of the sixteenth century; and 2.) to help the student become aware of the complexities and assumptions entailed in the articulation of a coherent political theory. We will be reading such major political philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Machiavelli. Special attention will be paid to how the later thinkers draw especially on the thought of Plato and Aristotle in the development of their own political theories. We will be concerned with such issues as the relation between nature and convention, the role of the individual in the political community, and, generally, the value and purposes of political life.
• Greek Political Thought (Political Science 403, Winter 2004): A range of literary works from ancient Greece by Homer, the tragedians, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle and the fourth-century orators served as the basis for reflections on the meaning of assorted political concepts and practices such as democracy, justice, citizenship and freedom.
  

Andreas Schonle and Julia Hell have team-taught:

• Ruins of Modernity (Rackham Interdisciplinary Seminar, Rackham 570, Fall 2004): 9/11 represents a watershed in world history in more ways than one. The destruction of the world's most famous symbolic icon of modernity has brought to a catastrophic climax a debate about the ways in which modernity, broadly conceived, seems to have invented, framed, and produced ruins. Is there a possible elective affinity between ruins and modernity? Ruins began to be perceived and preserved as ruins only during the Renaissance, when the awareness of historical discontinuities, the demise of ancient civilizations, raised the status of traces from the past. These traces--architectural remnants which had long lost their functionality and meaning--could be invested with various attributes, historical, aesthetic, political and otherwise. A desire for preservation in the interest of historical continuity barely concealed political exploitations of ruins, in particular in the context of revolutionary upheaval, colonial expansion, or totalitarian aesthetic ideology. This course will explore this nexus between ruins and modernity from a broad inter-disciplinary perspective and with case studies relating to east and west, north and south. Theoretical readings by Benjamin, Simmel, Freud, Adorno and others.

Ruth Scodel has taught:

• Classics and Cinema (Classical Civilization 341, Fall 2002, Winter 2003, Fall 2004, and Fall 2005). This course explored how (mostly Hollywood) cinema has represented the ancient past and its literature. Reading the ancient sources and seeing how films have transformed them, we looked especially at the hateful tyranny and attractive decadence of the movies' ancient Rome. Beginning with the silent era (Last Days of Pompeii) and the 1903s (de Mille's Cleopatra of 1934), we examined films such as Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra (1963), and Fall of the Roman Empire, as well as the pornographic Caligula of 1980 and Fellini's strange Satyricon. We also looked at comedies such as Roman Scandals (1933), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Life of Brian. Topics included the representation of gender; Romans as fascists, communists, and Americans; spectacle and voyeruism; slavery and race; and the suicide of the noble Roman.

Betsy Sears has taught:

• Problems in Medieval Art--Medieval Art "Theory" (History of Art, Fall 2003): This seminar will focus on documents, textual and pictorial, revealing of medieval understandings of art and art-making, especially in the Latin West. We will submit to scrutiny a range of texts written over many centuries, from antique texts read in the Middle Ages (Pliny, Horace) through influential ruminations of the Church Fathers (Augustine, Gregory) and important early medieval discussions of religious art (Theodulf of Orléans, Jonas of Orléans), to high medieval monastic and scholastic texts (Bernard of Clairvaux, Suger, Hugh of St.-Victor, Thomas Aquinas) and vernacular writings of the late Middle Ages (Guillaume de Machaut, etc.). We will study medieval rhetorical theory and works of ekphrasis as a way of retrieving categories applicable to visual styles and modes. Literary evocations of art and artists will come into play, as will non-literary documents (guild regulations, household accounts, inventories). In every case we will study medieval texts in relation to relevant works of art. The secondary literature on medieval art writing grows ever more extensive, and we will examine these recent texts in conjunction with the primary sources. The seminar is open to students in any field interested in pre-modern notions of art-its powers and dangers, its origins, its functions.

Susan Siegfried has taught:

• Origins of Modernism: Art and Culture of Nineteenth-Century France (History of Art 271, Fall 2003): This course examines a series of remarkable episodes in modern French painting, from the establishment of an official, state-sponsored form of Classicism through a sequence of developments that threw these norms into question and saw the emergence of a modern art market. We explore the politically charged Classicism of the early years of the 19th century, Romanticism and its increasingly conflicted relationship with official Classicism, mid-19th century Realism, and a succession of late nineteenth-century avant-garde initiatives from Impressionism to Neo-Impressionism. These episodes played out the deep-seated contradictions that were emerging in modern society. We consider the different forms taken by opposition to established cultural values, as well as the new and hotly contested approaches to the representation of modern life. The 19th century is the period during which modern art developed its characteristic strategies and behavioral patterns: an insistence on innovation, originality and individuality; a contentious involvement with tradition; a critical relationship with both institutional and commercial culture; and a strained and conflict-ridden relationship to changing forms of political power. It is also the period that witnessed a thorough-going reassessment of the nature and status of the visual image, and a parallel concern with the possibilities and limitations of the medium of painting, as well as of new forms of printed media and photography. The course is designed to encourage close readings of images (by David, Ingres, Delacroix, Gericault, Daumier, Courbet, Manet, Degas, Seurat, et al.) within the parameters of their historical contexts and of recent critical debate.

Pat Simons has taught:

• Visual Representation of Classical Mythology (History of Art 194, Winter 2005): Myths are one way of structuring and explaining the world. This course explored the "afterlife" of classical mythologies by focusing on the classical revival of the Renaissance but also the intersection of these traditions with contemporary representations, chiefly in film. The course aimed to familiarize students with a core set of myths, ones narrated in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and which provided a framework for picturing themes like transformation, desire and creativity. The seminar combined analysis of literary poetics with close attention to visual literacy. Through gender analysis, the class focused on the construction of masculinity (e.g., Hercules) and femininity (e.g., Venus). The very fictionality of myth made it an apt vehicle for the figuring of creativity, here investigated through the stories of Narcissus, Prometheus, and Pygmalion. For more information, please visit the course website.

Vivasvan Soni has taught:

• Trials and Tragedies: The Literature of Unhappiness (English 417, Winter 2003): Literature is obsessed with the question of unhappiness. Reflection on human suffering--its causes and origins, its purpose and meaning - is one of the perennial tasks of literature. Implicit in different kinds of narratives are different answers to the questions "Why do we suffer?" and "Is there any possibility for happiness?" The task of this class will be to examine a broad range of different narratives in order to determine how the very structure of a narrative provides answers to the questions about human happiness and unhappiness. From Greek tragedies to biographies of martyrs to modern novels, we will attempt to discover the very different strategies by which narratives address the problem of unhappiness, and the different assumptions such narratives make about what happiness means. Why is Greek tragedy so different from the modern novel in the way it treats suffering? What does this mean for the way we understand happiness? How does the modern novel change our understanding of happiness? These are some of the questions we will explore, trying to understand what constitutes a "tragedy" and how this is different from the innumerable narratives of trial and suffering which abound in narrative literature. In this class, we will develop a sophisticated series of strategies for analyzing narratives, and we will learn to approach from a formal or narratological perspective one of the most fundamental questions posed by literary texts: how are we to make sense of the fact of human suffering. Implicit in these narratives, and their answer to the question about human happiness, we will find an entire moral and political vision, an understanding of the individual's relation to the social world, and ultimately, an account of the meaning and purpose of human life. Finally, we will see that narrative literature transforms how we ourselves perceive our possibilities for happiness. Readings will include, but not be limited to, the following: Herodotus, The Persian Wars (1.30-34); Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound; Sophocles, Antigone and Philoctetes; Euripides, Medea and The Bacchae; The Book of Job and selections from Genesis; Augustine, City of God (selections); Chretien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (selections); Shakespeare, King Lear; Fox's Lives of Saints and Martyrs (selections); Milton, Paradise Lost (selections); Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress; Richardson, Pamela; Kafka, The Trial; Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Levi, Survival in Auschwitz; and Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.

Lydia M. Soo has taught:

• The Urban History of Rome (Archaeology 409/603, Winter 2005): This seminar investigated the urban history of Rome from antiquity to the present. It included a study abroad component in Rome during Spring Break. The interconnections between the city's urban spaces, architecture, and topography during specific periods of its history were examined. The seminar was also concerned with the city as a layered fabric of successive interventions, each the product of cultural factors related to function, aesthetics, power, etc., which nonetheless preserve, to varying degrees, the physical past. An important vehicle for this discussion were historic maps, particularly the Nolli map of 1748. In Rome, lectures and walks were given by Allan Ceen of the Studium Urbis in Rome.

Cindy Sowers