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(a) Courses taught in the original language
Dr Tom Mackenzie (UCL)
*+20 credits
Meets: Tuesdays 9-11 (Term 1)
This course offers students the opportunity to explore two aspects of the interaction between philosophy and literature in the Classical World. The first is what philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle have to say about the nature of poetry. The second, not unrelated, aspect is the way that the form and content of ancient philosophy can be seen to be significantly related. Students will look at a range of texts from across the ancient canon, including the Presocratics, Plato's dialogues, Seneca's letters, Cicero's dialogues and Lucretius' didactic verse. This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option (CLASGG14).
Assessment: one 5,000 word essay
Place: UCL
Prof. Nick Gonis (UCL)
+40 credits
Meets: Tuesdays 2-4 (Terms 1 and 2)
This course aims to introduce participants to the study of Greek papyri, documentary as well as literary, and to offer training in editing them. Each class will focus on a small number of texts, one or two of which will be studied in detail on a photograph. The texts are chosen to illustrate the development of Greek cursive scripts and bookhands; to examine formal aspects of the transmission of Greek literature on papyrus; and to give an idea of the range of documentary types available as sources for the history of Egypt from the age of the Ptolemies to late antiquity. A good knowledge of Greek is essential. This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 30 credit option (CLASGG03).
Assessment: Two written assignments: (1) a 'take-home' exercise in identifying published papyri on the basis of electronic resources and translations in English of published documents (40%); (2) an edition of a papyrus or an essay (60%)
Place: UCL: Gordon House G-09
Dr Peter Agócs (UCL)
*+20 credits
Meets: Mondays 2-4 (Term 1)
This MA course will be devoted to Athenian tragedy of the fifth century BCE, focusing in particular on the theatre of Sophocles. This year, we will focus on Philoctetes. Topics considered will include style, interpretation, textual transmission, dramaturgy, intertextuality, staging, metre, and social, political and religious context. The classes will be organised as a seminar, where we approach the problems of Greek tragedy and the play through a close collaborative reading, in Greek, of Sophocles' text. As well, each week two pieces of secondary literature (book chapters or articles) will be set to assist discussion and familiarise you with the issues at stake in interpreting tragedy. For preparation, see the new (CUP, 2013) Cambridge 'Green and Yellow' commentary on the play by Seth Schein (this will be our course textbook: please prepare the first 100 lines for the first class!).
This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option (a reading knowledge of ancient Greek is, however, required).
Assessment: One essay of 5,000 words max.
Place: UCL Gordon House G-09
Prof. Stephen Colvin (UCL)
*+20 credits
Meets: Tuesdays 4-6 (Term 1)
An introduction to the dialects of
Ancient Greek, with the aim of preparing students to read Greek dialect
literature (especially CLASGG26 Greek Lyric Poetry). It includes a basic review of Greek historical phonology and
morphology. This course introduces the language, script and history of
the ancient Greek dialects, with a focus on literary dialect. It also
serves as an introduction to Indo-European studies. A range of both
literary texts and epigraphic texts will be studied: core topics will
include the history of writing in the ancient Aegean and the graphic
representation of Greek; the relationship between epigraphic and
literary language; the dialectal affiliations of Homeric Greek; literary Aeolic, Doric, and Ionic; the
Attic-Ionic koine; principles of dialectology and modern views on the
interrelationship of the Greek dialects.
A course packet is
provided. Additional material and reading is delivered through the
Moodle page. A week-by-week breakdown of work is given on the Moodle
page.
Assessment: 7 weekly problem sheets (30%) and a project of 5000 words (70%).
Place: UCL: 26 Gordon Square, G10 [access opposite Waterstones Bookshop during building works]
- CLASGG26 Greek Lyric Poetry
Dr Peter Agócs (UCL)
*+20 credits
Meets: Tuesdays 12-2 (Term 2)
This MA course will focus on selected texts of the archaic and early classical Greek song culture from a holistic perspective that looks at the meaning of these texts in the culture for which they were created. Themes to be covered will include song/music and society, song and politics, metre, music and dance, performance and its contexts, cultural memory and ideas of tradition, myth, religion and ritual, gender, the relation of the poetic work to its occasion and context, time and narrative, language, diction and style, arte allusiva, the poet's voice in different genres, and the history of the lyric texts and their ancient reception. In 2016/17 we will focus on the choral odes of Pindar, reading a mix of his production in different melic genres (naturally with the main focus on victory odes composed for different Greek cities). A photocopied text and full bibliography will be provided on the course Moodle page, from which you will be able to prepare. The focus in class will be on translating and discussing the original poems in detail in a friendly seminar format, enabling us to test our ideas and interpretations against the language of the Greek text.
Assessment: One essay of 4-5,000 words
This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option CLASGG25 (a reading knowledge of ancient Greek is, however, required).
Place: UCL Gordon House G-09
Professor Gesine Manuwald (UCL)
*+20 credits
Meets: Wednesdays 10-12 (Term 2 )
This course will provide an introduction to Cicero the politician and orator as well as to key elements in the history and political life of the Roman Republic, by a close look at Cicero's writings referring to his consular year. The course will focus on reading (in the original Latin) the entire corpus of the Catilinarian Orations, paying particular attention to Cicero's argument and political strategy and their adaptation in speeches on similar topics given before different bodies. There will be supplementary reading in English of some of Cicero's letters, of excerpts from other speeches and of references to Cicero's epic about his consulship. This will allow for discussion of issues such as aims and methods of Cicero's shaping of his consular persona, his presentation of 'historical facts', his view of the Roman res publica or the possible reasons for the publication of these speeches and their later collection in a corpus. This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option (CLASGL20).Course text: Dyck, A.R. , (ed.), 2008. Cicero, Catilinarians. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, CUP.
Assessment: one piece of coursework (commentary or essay) of 5,000 words
Place: tbc
- CLASGL22 Vergil
Dr Fiachra Mac Góráin (UCL)
*20 credits
Meets: Tuesdays 9-11 (Term 1)
This course will be based on a close reading of books 7 and 8 of Virgil's Aeneid, which will be studied in Latin with reference to the commentary tradition from Servius through La Cerda to Horsfall. We will address these books' place within the Aeneid under the following rubrics: structure and design; aesthetic appreciation; poetic craft and tradition; cultural and political context; text and transmission. This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option (CLASGL21)
Assessment: One essay of 5,000 words max.
Place: UCL: Gordon House G-09
(b) Courses taught in translation
- CLASGG22 Ancient Greek Historiography
Dr Rosie Harman (UCL)
+20 credits
Meets: Mondays 2-4, Term 2
This
is an introductory course on Ancient Greek historical writing, taught in
English translation (no knowledge of Ancient Greek language required). In the Classical period
prose accounts of the past were a radical new invention; authoritative
narratives about the past had previously been in verse form, most obviously
Homer. The course will examine how the history of literature changed
irrevocably in this period of huge intellectual development. We will read the 2
main historical writers of the Classical period - Herodotus and Thucydides - in
literary and cultural context, beginning with poetic accounts of the past and
early experiments in prose, and examining the interrelation with other genres
such as tragedy and rhetoric. The course will be useful to students coming from
a Classics background who have not previously had much opportunity to study Herodotus
and Thucydides and want to understand more about literary developments of the
Classical period, and to students from an Ancient History background who want
to know more about how Classical Greek history writing works. This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option (CLASGG22).
Assessment: One essay of 5,000 words maximum
Place: UCL: Gordon House G-09
Professor Phiroze Vasunia (UCL)
*20 credits
Meets: Fridays 12-2 (Term 1)
This course looks at ancient and modern literary criticism and also explores the relationship between them. We shall begin by studying some of the major texts from antiquity (e.g. Aristotle, Horace, Longinus) and then proceed to some important texts from the modern period (e.g. Benjamin, Barthes, Said). We shall compare examples of literary criticism within and across cultures and periods. Themes to be discussed include aesthetics, style, and form, but particular attention will be given to the social and political contexts of criticism. All texts will be read in translation. This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option.
Assessment: One essay of 5,000 words max.
Place: UCL: room G09, Gordon House
Professor Maria Wyke/Team (UCL)
*40 credits
Meets: Thursdays 2 - 4pm (Terms 1 and 2)
This course will be taught by a combination of lectures, seminars and research visits to relevant institutions, such as the British Museum and the Warburg Institute, and the Petrie Museum. The core course is intended to provide training in research techniques and resources for postgraduate study in the reception of antiquity, and to introduce students to relevant ideas and methods involved in studying the reception of the classical world across a range of periods, societies, and media. It provides key illustrations of different responses to classical cultures in action, and demonstrates how later cultures have viewed and made use of the classical world from their own particular standpoint.
Assessment: Two coursework essays of 5,000 words max each.
Place: UCL: room tbc
Professor Maria Wyke and Dr Clare Foster (UCL)
*20 credits
Meets: Thursdays 11-1, Term 1
How does cinema reconstruct Roman history? What distinguishes cinematic histories of Rome from other historical forms? This course will explore the early experimental period of filmmaking, its turn to antiquity to legitimate the new cinematic medium, its relationship to painting, historical fiction, and theatre, and its distinct methods for bringing antiquity into the modern world (embodiment, colour, music and movement). It will also address the development of the star system, sound technology, the classical Hollywood style, and the emergence and operation of genre. The course will utilise the critical vocabulary of reception studies and film analysis, and engage with issues such as sources, narrative structure, and ideology (including gender & sexuality, colonialism and religion). This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option (CLASGR03)
Assessment: One essay of 5,000 words maximum
Place: UCL: G09 Gordon House
- CLASGR15 Ancient Rome on Film: From the 1950s to the 21st Century
Professor Maria Wyke and Dr Clare Foster (UCL)
*20 credits
Meets: Thursdays 11-1, Term 2
How did Hollywood cinema come to dominate representations of ancient Rome on screen and how has its dominance been challenged? How do ideas of the historical operate in and through such films? Why did the genre of the Hollywood blockbuster decline in the 1960s and re-emerge in the twenty-first century? How is cinema changed by the advent of television, video/DVD, and now the global digital environment? The course will utilise the critical vocabulary of reception studies and film analysis, and engage with issues such as tradition, commodification, technology, contemporaneity (including Cold War ideology, 'the war on terror', and nationalism), and recognition capital. This course can also be taken by students at UCL on other MA programmes as a 15 credit option (CLASGR14)
Assessment: One essay of 5,000 words maximum
Place: G09 Gordon House
