ELEMENTARY MODERN GREEK I
This is the first semester of a year-long course designed for students wishing to learn Greek as it is written and spoken in Greece today. As well as learning the skills necessary to read texts of moderate difficulty and converse on a wide range of topics, students explore Modern Greeces cultural landscape from parea to poetry to politics. Special attention will be paid to Greek New York. How do our, American, Greek-American definitions of language and culture differ from their, Greek ones?
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Instructor:
Nikolas Kakkoufa
Info - 4 points
ELEMENTARY LATIN I
For students who have never studied Latin. An intensive study of grammar with reading of simple prose and poetry.
- 4 points
ELEMENTARY LATIN II
Prerequisites: LATN UN1101. A continuation of LATN UN1101, including a review of grammar and syntax for students whose study of Latin has been interrupted.
- 4 points
Warfare in the Ancient Greek World
This course focuses on intercommunal and interstate conflict in the ancient Greek world,
from Homer to the Hellenistic age, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean (730 BCE-100
BCE). The emphasis will be on the two elements of "miltary history": that is, we will pay
equal attention to all the elements of violent, murderous and destructive conflict on the
battlefield and in various forms of unconventional warfare, and to the social, economic and
cultural history of war. In other words, we will look at the experience of combat, tactics,
strategy, operation, sieges, naval warfare; but also at economics, social structure, cultural
constraints, gender constructions. The study of ancient Greek warfare, like everything else in
the realm of ancient history, is very much dependent on good handling of the complex, far
from straightforward, and incomplete sources. We will therefore think about, and practice,
self-aware source criticism, of literary, documentary, visual and material documents.
Warfare in the Ancient Greek World - Dis
Warfare in Ancient Greek
This course focuses on intercommunal and interstate conflict in the ancient Greek world,
from Homer to the Hellenistic age, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean (730 BCE-100
BCE). The emphasis will be on the two elements of "miltary history": that is, we will pay
equal attention to all the elements of violent, murderous and destructive conflict on the
battlefield and in various forms of unconventional warfare, and to the social, economic and
cultural history of war. In other words, we will look at the experience of combat, tactics,
strategy, operation, sieges, naval warfare; but also at economics, social structure, cultural
constraints, gender constructions. The study of ancient Greek warfare, like everything else in
the realm of ancient history, is very much dependent on good handling of the complex, far
from straightforward, and incomplete sources. We will therefore think about, and practice,
self-aware source criticism, of literary, documentary, visual and material documents.
Warfare in the Ancient Greek World - Dis
Warfare in Ancient Greek
This course focuses on intercommunal and interstate conflict in the ancient Greek world,
from Homer to the Hellenistic age, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean (730 BCE-100
BCE). The emphasis will be on the two elements of "miltary history": that is, we will pay
equal attention to all the elements of violent, murderous and destructive conflict on the
battlefield and in various forms of unconventional warfare, and to the social, economic and
cultural history of war. In other words, we will look at the experience of combat, tactics,
strategy, operation, sieges, naval warfare; but also at economics, social structure, cultural
constraints, gender constructions. The study of ancient Greek warfare, like everything else in
the realm of ancient history, is very much dependent on good handling of the complex, far
from straightforward, and incomplete sources. We will therefore think about, and practice,
self-aware source criticism, of literary, documentary, visual and material documents.
INTENSIVE ELEMENTARY GREEK
Covers all of Greek grammar and syntax in one term. Prepares the student to enter second-year Greek (GREK UN2101 or GREK UN2102).
- 4 points
INTERMEDIATE GREEK: PROSE
Prerequisites: GREK UN1101- GREK UN1102 or the equivalent. Selections from Attic prose.
- 4 points
INTERMEDIATE MODERN GREEK I
Prerequisites: GRKM UN1101 and GRKM UN1102 or the equivalent. Corequisites: GRKM UN2111 This course is designed for students who are already familiar with the basic grammar and syntax of modern Greek language and can communicate at an elementary level. Using films, newspapers, and popular songs, students engage the finer points of Greek grammar and syntax and enrich their vocabulary. Emphasis is given to writing, whether in the form of film and book reviews or essays on particular topics taken from a selection of second year textbooks.
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Instructor:
Chrysanthe Filippardos
Info - 4 points
INTERMEDIATE LATIN I
Prerequisites: LATN UN1101 & UN1102 or LATN UN1121 or equivalent. Selections from Catullus and Cicero.
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Instructor:
Joseph A Howley
CULPA: 7
Info
- 4 points
INTERMEDIATE LATIN I
Prerequisites: LATN UN1101 & UN1102 or LATN UN1121 or equivalent. Selections from Catullus and Cicero.
- 4 points
INTERMEDIATE GREEK II: HOMER
Prerequisites: GREK UN1101- GREK UN1102 or GREK UN1121 or the equivalent. Detailed grammatical and literary study of several books of the Iliad and introduction to the techniques or oral poetry, to the Homeric hexameter, and to the historical background of Homer.
- 4 points
INTERMEDIATE LATIN II
Prerequisites: LATN UN2101 or the equivalent. Selections from Ovids Metamorphoses and from Sallust, Livy, Seneca, or Pliny.
- 4 points
GREECE TODAY: LANG, LIT
Prerequisites: GRKM un2102 This course builds on the elements of the language acquired in GRKM1101 through 2102, but new students may place into it, after special arrangement with the instructor. It introduces the students to a number of authentic multimodal materials drawn from a range of sources which include films, literary texts, media, music etc. in order to better understand Greece’s current cultural, socio-economic, and political landscape. In doing so, it aims to foster transcultural understanding and intercultural competence, while further developing the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Topics of discussion include language, gender equality, youth unemployment, education, queer identities, refugees, and the multilayered aspects of the crisis.Pre-requisite for this class: GRKM 2102 or placement test. Instructor’s permission required if the students have not taken GRKM2102 or equivalent.
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Instructor:
Paraskevi Martzavou
CULPA: 2 Info - 3 points
AUGUSTAN POETRY
Prerequisites: LATN UN2102 or the equivalent. Selections from Vergil and Horace. Combines literary analysis with work in grammar and metrics.
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Instructor:
Rosalie Stoner
Info - 3 points
Illness and Healing in the Classical wor
In this course we will explore the experience of illness and healing in ancient Greece and Rome, with some exploration of other contexts such as Egypt, Babylonia, and Christianity down to modern Greece. The class will focus on close reading of documents, from the viewpoint of the ill and of those who try to understand illness and act on their understanding. We will pay attention to medical texts such as the diagnostic writing of the Hippocratic corpus or the treatises of Galen, but also popular texts and artifacts such as ex-votos.
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Instructor:
Paraskevi Martzavou
CULPA: 2 Info - 3 points
GLOBAL HISTORIES OF THE BOOK
This class will consider the idea and history of “the book” through history and around the world. Its primary objective is to introduce students to major topics and questions in “book history” while working to 1) resist the discipline’s traditional interest in modern European print culture and 2) situate that interest in global and transhistorical contexts.
Learning about the histories of books and writing in different eras and parts of the world will go hand-in-hand with critical examinations of how and why those histories have been periodized and narrativized the way they have. Although “book” is a technological category, we will consider how helpful technological narratives and comparisons of book practice and culture are. We will also engage not only in transhistorical and transnational comparisons of book culture and practice, but also examine the global book as a postcolonial phenomenon, marked by patterns of influence, appropriation and imposition across time and space.
This course will perforce be not comprehensive but instead oriented around case studies: we will be unable to examine every stage of every nation’s book history in detail. Rather, we will focus on objects and scholarly case studies that illuminate both the history and methods involved, and on productive points of contact. We will visit libraries and examine books both in person and through virtual simulacra.
What does it mean to tell “global” histories of the book? For our purposes, it means not assuming that the terms, categories, or periods of modern western book history should be definitive for other times and places. It also means examining the way that book cultures participated in and were shaped by patterns of exchange, conquest and colonization. We will explore points of contact across time as well as space.
By the end of the semester, students will be able to speak to the history of the book across several cultures and linguistic traditions, speak comparatively to dimensions of book practice in two cultures, and be able to present the history and comparative dimensions of a chosen object from Columbia’s special collections. Students will also become acquainted with the use of special collections libraries.
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Instructor:
Joseph A Howley
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points
SELECTIONS FROM GREEK LIT
GREEK LITERATURE SELECTIONS
Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.
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Instructor:
Seth R Schwartz
CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info - 3 points
HELLENISM&THE TOPOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION
This course examines the way particular spaces—cultural, urban, literary—serve as sites for the production and reproduction of cultural and political imaginaries. It places particular emphasis on the themes of the polis, the city, and the nation-state as well as on spatial representations of and responses to notions of the Hellenic across time. Students will consider a wide range of texts as spaces—complex sites constituted and complicated by a multiplicity of languages—and ask: To what extent is meaning and cultural identity, sitespecific? How central is the classical past in Western imagination? How have great metropolises such as Paris, Istanbul, and New York fashioned themselves in response to the allure of the classical and the advent of modern Greece? How has Greece as a specific site shaped the study of the Cold War, dictatorships, and crisis?
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Instructor:
Dimitris Antoniou
h-index: 5 Info - 3 points
POST-BACCALAUREATE SEMINAR
This seminar aims to provide students in the post-baccalaureate certificate program with opportunities 1) to (re-)familiarize themselves with a selection of major texts from classical antiquity, which will be read in English, 2) to become acquainted with scholarship on these texts and with scholarly writing in general, 3) to write analytically about these texts and the interpretations posed about them in contemporary scholarship, and 4) to read in the original language selected passages of one of the texts in small tutorial groups, which will meet every week for an additional hour with members of the faculty.
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Instructor:
Gareth Williams
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points
POST-BACCALAUREATE SEMINAR
This seminar aims to provide students in the post-baccalaureate certificate program with opportunities 1) to (re-)familiarize themselves with a selection of major texts from classical antiquity, which will be read in English, 2) to become acquainted with scholarship on these texts and with scholarly writing in general, 3) to write analytically about these texts and the interpretations posed about them in contemporary scholarship, and 4) to read in the original language selected passages of one of the texts in small tutorial groups, which will meet every week for an additional hour with members of the faculty.
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Instructor:
Gareth Williams
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points
THE MAJOR SEMINAR
A seminar designed to prepare students to develop and bring to completion a substantive piece of original research in an area of their own interest and choosing which may (or may not) be developed into a Senior Thesis the following semester; (ii) a lecture series introducing students to the faculty of the Department of Classics at Columbia University and the methods of scholarly research in the disciplines that comprise classical studies.
DIRECTED READINGS IN GREEK LIT
Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of reading in Greek literature, to be tested by a series of short papers, one long paper, or an oral or written examination.
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Instructor:
Rosa M Andujar
Info -
Instructor:
Marcus Folch
CULPA: 6
Info
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Instructor:
Elizabeth K Irwin
CULPA: 7
Info
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Instructor:
John T Ma
CULPA: 4 Info -
Instructor:
Paraskevi Martzavou
CULPA: 2 Info -
Instructor:
Nancy Worman
CULPA: 23
Wikipedia
Info
- 3 points
DIRECTED READINGS
Designed for undergraduates who want to do directed reading in a period or on a topic not covered in the curriculum.
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Instructor:
Nikolas Kakkoufa
Info -
Instructor:
Dimitris Antoniou
h-index: 5 Info -
Instructor:
Karen Van Dyck
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Paraskevi Martzavou
CULPA: 2 Info - 1-4 points
DIRECTED READINGS IN LATIN LIT
Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of reading in Latin literature, to be tested by a series of short papers, one long paper, or an oral or written examination.
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Instructor:
Rosalie Stoner
Info -
Instructor:
Joseph A Howley
CULPA: 7
Info
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Instructor:
Kristina Milnor
CULPA: 21
Wikipedia
h-index: 10
Info
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Instructor:
Katharina Volk
CULPA: 7
Info
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Instructor:
Gareth Williams
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points
SUPERVISED RSRCH IN GREEK LIT
Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of research in Greek literature. Research paper required.
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Instructor:
Rosa M Andujar
Info -
Instructor:
Marcus Folch
CULPA: 6
Info
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Instructor:
John T Ma
CULPA: 4 Info -
Instructor:
Paraskevi Martzavou
CULPA: 2 Info -
Instructor:
Nancy Worman
CULPA: 23
Wikipedia
Info
- 3 points
SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR
Designed for students writing a senior thesis or doing advanced research on Greek or Greek Diaspora topics.
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Instructor:
Nikolas Kakkoufa
Info -
Instructor:
Karen Van Dyck
Wikipedia Info - 1-4 points
SUPERVISED RSRCH IN LATIN LIT
Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of research in Latin literature. Research paper required.
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Instructor:
Rosalie Stoner
Info -
Instructor:
Joseph A Howley
CULPA: 7
Info
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Instructor:
Kristina Milnor
CULPA: 21
Wikipedia
h-index: 10
Info
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Instructor:
Katharina Volk
CULPA: 7
Info
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Instructor:
Gareth Williams
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points
LATIN LIT PROSE SELECTIONS
Prerequisites: LATN V3012 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.
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Instructor:
Katharina Volk
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points
HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE I
Prerequisites: at least two terms of Greek at the 3000-level or higher. Readings in Greek literature from Homer to the 4th century B.C.
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Instructor:
Elizabeth K Irwin
CULPA: 7
Info
- 4 points
LAT LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC
Prerequisites: at least two terms of Latin at the 3000-level or higher. Latin literature from the beginning to early Augustan times.
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Instructor:
Katharina Volk
CULPA: 7
Info
- 4 points
Retranslation: Worlding C. P. Cavafy
Focusing on a canonical author is an immensely productive way to explore translation research and practice. The works of Sappho, Dante, Rilke, Césaire or Cavafy raise the question of reception in relation to many different critical approaches and illustrate many different strategies of translation and adaptation. The very issue of intertextuality that challenged the validity of author-centered courses after Roland Barthes’s proclamation of the death of the author reinstates it if we are willing to engage the oeuvre as an on-going interpretive project. By examining the poetry of the Greek Diaspora poet C. P. Cavafy in all its permutations (as criticism, translation, adaptation), the Cavafy case becomes an experimental ground for thinking about how a canonical author can open up our theories and practices of translation. For the final project students will choose a work by an author with a considerable body of critical work and translations and, following the example of Cavafy and his translators, come up with their own retranslations. Among the materials considered are commentary by E. M. Forster, C. M. Bowra, and Roman Jakobson, translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, James Merrill, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Daniel Mendelsohn, poems by W.H. Auden, Lawrence Durrell, and Joseph Brodsky, and visual art by David Hockney, and Duane Michals.
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Instructor:
Karen Van Dyck
Wikipedia Info - 4 points
SUPERVISED INDEPENDENT RESEARCH
All supervisors will be Columbia faculty who hold a PhD. Students are responsible for identifying their own supervisor and it is at the discretion of faculty whether they accept to supervise independent research. Projects must be focused on Hellenic Studies and can be approached from any disciplinary background. Students are expected to develop their own reading list in consultation with their supervisor. In addition to completing assigned readings, the student must also write a Hellenic studies paper of 20 pages. Projects other than a research paper will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Hellenic Studies is an interdisciplinary field that revolves around two main axes: space and time. Its teaching and research are focused on the study of post-classical Greece in various fields: Language, Literature, History, Politics, Anthropology, Art, Archaeology, and in various periods: Late Antique, Medieval, Byzantine, Modern Greek etc. Therefore, the range of topics that are acceptable as a Hellenic Studies seminar paper is broad. It is upon each supervisor to discuss the specific topic with the student. The work submitted for this independent study course must be different from the work a student submits in other courses, including the Hellenic Studies Senior Research Seminar.
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Instructor:
Nikolas Kakkoufa
Info -
Instructor:
Dimitris Antoniou
h-index: 5 Info -
Instructor:
Karen Van Dyck
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Paraskevi Martzavou
CULPA: 2 Info - 3 points
DIRECTED READINGS
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Topics chosen in consultation between members of the staff and students.
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Instructor:
Elizabeth K Irwin
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points
DIRECTED READINGS
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Topics chosen in consultation between members of the staff and students.
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Instructor:
Elizabeth K Irwin
CULPA: 7
Info
- 1-4 points
MA THESIS
This course will enable students to complete a research study of considerable length that will (i) enable them to explore a given area of research in substantive detail; (ii) put them on the path to true competence as independent researchers; and (iii) provide those who go on to apply to PhD programs with a substantial writing sample that shows off their technical abilities to the best advantage.
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Instructor:
Elizabeth K Irwin
CULPA: 7
Info
- 4 points
GRADUATE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM
The Graduate Research Colloquium is a forum that offers two types of research seminars over the course of the semester. In the first, formerly the Graduate Colloquium, up to six outside speakers are invited by the graduate organizers to present research papers to an audience of graduates, faculty and others interested within the larger NYC Classics community, and afterwards to engage in discussion. The second is a Work-in-Progress seminar in which Columbia Classics graduate students present their research to their graduate peers in whatever format they deem most conducive to conveying their research to their audience and receiving feedback. The audience for these eight seminars is restricted to graduate students, the instructor who presides over the course, and any faculty the graduate student presenters choose should choose to invite. At least one semester of the Graduate Research Colloquium is required for MAO students and PhD students must attend the course in both the Fall and Spring semesters of their first year.
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Instructor:
Paraskevi Martzavou
CULPA: 2 Info -
Instructor:
Katharina Volk
CULPA: 7
Info
- 2 points
Homer s Odyssey: Ruse and Narration
Homers Odyssey
A reading of Homer’s Odyssey with a focus on seminal episodes having to do with the
construction of the plot, and the intricate relationship between the Homeric narrator, his
characters, and internal and external audiences.
The Odyssey famously contains comparisons of its polytropos character (var.
reading polykrotos) to a poet, both explicitly (11.363ff.) and implicitly (19.203 with Hesiod,
Theogony 26-9). We will consider how the quality of being polytropos (including a tendency
towards ambiguity and indirection) factors into the ethics of narration in the poem, at every level
of the narrative. We will also consider the ethics of narration in the poem in relation to its
importance in the subsequent Greek rhetorical tradition. Archaic poetry, and the Homeric
poems, often suffer from the implicit bias associated with being the earliest extant Greek
literature, leading to the view that their content is naïve when compared against the literary
developments of the fifth century and the Hellenistic period. This seminar will approach
the Odyssey as a foundational text for Greek rhetorical culture, with particular attention to what it
offered the rhetorical culture of classical Athens.
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Instructor:
Elizabeth K Irwin
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points
Seneca Tragedy: Models, Motivations, Mea
This seminar aims to introduce students to the range and complexity of the tragedies composed by the eminent philosopher-politician, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (
c
. 2 BCE-65 CE). The course will combine intensive linguistic analysis of individual dramas with a focus on their political, philosophical and cultural meanings in the 1st century CE. Beyond our shared study of these highly allusive texts, a main goal will be to demonstrate that Seneca does not just write within a received tradition, but also uses remarkable artistic strategies by which to give new life to that tradition.
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Instructor:
Gareth Williams
CULPA: 7
Info
- 3 points