TOPICS IN ANCIENT DRAMA

Atreid family stories

This course is designed as an accompaniment to the Greek or Latin
play that is put on by the Barnard and Columbia Ancient Drama Group each year, though
it is open to any student interested in the aesthetics and politics of theater and drama.
Course focus and some content will rotate year to year, calibrated to serve the play or
plays chosen by the student director. We will read these and other relevant other plays or
similarly adjacent texts, as well as scholarly literature on topics centered around the body
in performance, including ancient theaters and stage space, costumes and masks,
deportment and gestures, proxemics, and so on. We will also explore aspects of ancient
drama and theatricality that relate to translation and reception, as well as inflections of
gender and status. Other topics may include the mythic background (e.g., in epic and/or
lyric), politics of aesthetics in ancient Athens, and gender-genre dynamics.
Each component will extend over three or four classes and consider the ancient
plays through readings of primary texts (in translation) and conceptual / contextual
backgrounds. There will be an additional class hour for those who wish to read the play
in the original language (signed up for as a 1-point directed reading).

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Nancy Worman
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 0-3 points

Archaeology of Crisis: The Collapse of t

ARCHAEOLOGY OF CRISIS

In this lecture, we’ll examine the “globalized” palace network that spanned the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age, paying especially close attention to the Mycenaean culture zone. We’ll think about the turmoil that resulted in the destruction or abandonment of all known palaces in the Eastern Mediterranean, follow the trail of some of the armed refugees that both fled from and caused yet more turmoil, and end up in Philistia, the new homeland of a subset of these migrants. In this region, now constituting of the Gaza Strip and Southern Israel, we’ll witness competition, conflict, and cooperation in an ancient setting, as these newcomers selectively intermarried with locals, negotiated cultural and political boundaries, shifted alliances, created a political confederation, and eventually faded from view. Through readings, discussions, and short informal presentations, we’ll explore the methodologies by which archaeologists seek to gain a nuanced understanding of the past. We’ll also be closely attuned to how present challenges and crises spark new historical paradigms.

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Ellen Morris
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 3 points

DIRECTED READINGS

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Topics chosen in consultation between members of the staff and students.

• Instructor: Nancy Worman
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points