Transfer Student Courses in Classical Civilization (Division 344)

Fall Term, 1999 (September 8 - December 22, 1999)

To see what Transfer Student courses have been added or changed in Classical Civilization this week go to What's New This Week.

Section 001, 002 – Meets Oct. 26-Dec. 9 (Drop/Add deadline=November 8).

Instructor(s): Ruth Scodel (rscodel@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (1). (HU).

Mini/Short course

Credits: (1).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rscodel/ovid.html

Ovid has been among the most influential writers in the European literary tradition, and he is one of the most enjoyable authors in the canon. This mini-seminar will examine both the original contexts of his works and what he has meant for later readers, with emphasis on the love poetry and the “Metamorphoses.” Themes will include his treatment of women and sexuality, his narrative technique and wit, his relationships with Augustus and with Roman power, his presentation of self, and whatever aspects the group finds most interesting. We will look at both recent adaptations, including Ted Hughes’ “Tales from Ovid” and the collection “After Ovid,” and Elizabethan translations, including Golding’s “Metamorphoses” (which Shakespeare used) and Christopher Marlowe’s “Amores.” We will also look (briefly) at paintings based on Ovidian themes from the Renaissance to the present. There will be two short papers and oral reports.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Derek Collins

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (HU).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: http://www.umich.edu/~classics/cc/462-f99/

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the principal Greek myths as they developed in Greek and Roman literature. We shall also move beyond narrative to consider the ways in which classical myths have been interpreted by both ancient and modern commentators. We will discuss the many contexts in which Greeks and Romans retold their myths, including song, dramatic performance, written literature, and plastic arts such as sculpture and painting. Required reading will include Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, Homer’s Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns, selected tragdies from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. An additional course pack will provide further readings for discussion sections which will meet once a week to consider a theoretical approaches to myth, and other critical questions. Course requirements include two hour tests and a final exam.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Ludwig Koenen (koenen@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

We shall understand Greek religion as a traditional language, narrated in myth and performed in rituals, in which from prehistory to the cities of the fourth century Greeks understood their world and negotiated the realities, fears, and hopes of their lives and communities. The course will not offer a survey but, in comparative approaches, explore basic human concepts as they appear in selected topics (such as progressive and cyclic time, transcendence of sacred time and space in ritual performance, cosmogony, death and rebirth, chaos and renewal of social order, sacrifices, civic religion, the ecstatic body and mind, initiations) and a few paradigmatic gods, including Dionysos, the god of boundless contradictions. We shall confront the otherness of Greek culture as well as common humane experiences still relevant for the understanding of ourselves and modern societies. Lectures and regular discussions. Students will be graded on papers (several short and one of 8-10 pages) as well as on their participation in discussions.