Mar 29, 2024  
Catalogue 2013-2014 
    
Catalogue 2013-2014 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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GRST 301 - Seminar in Classical Civilization: The Aegean Bronze Age

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
How do we reconstruct the Aegean Bronze Age? How did the Greeks and Romans understand their own antiquity? What can we tell about ourselves through the way we think about the past? This seminar examines the way the modern era has understood the Aegean Bronze Age through Archaeological investigation and how ancient myth reveals the Greek and Roman view of the same period, situated in their distant past. The first half of the seminar focuses primarily on the archaeological rediscovery of Greek prehistory – with a focus on the Mycenaean world and its interactions with Troy and the Easter Aegean – via modern excavations and scholarship. This research has allowed us to reconstruct much of political, cultural, religious and domestic life in the Bronze Age, yet it is based on certain assumptions we make about the past, connected to our view of the present. To put these assumptions in perspective, the second half of the class considers the Greek and Roman interpretation in myth of this same period, particularly the treatment of the mythic past in the Homeric epics. How did the Greeks and Romans choose to remember, reformulate or reinvent the period in epic, historical accounts and tragedy? What does that reinvention reveal about the role the past plays in a nation’s consciousness? All readings are in English. Ms. Olsen.

Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Greek and Roman Studies, History, or another related discipline and sophomore status.

Two 75-minute periods.

Courses in English translation, numbered X00-X19 are taught entirely in English. No knowledge of Greek or Latin is required.



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