CURRENT SEMESTER (SPRING 2022)
Ancient History / Classical Civilization
Slavery in Classical Antiquity (Clst 222 / Cltr 222 / Hist 291)
In this course we will explore Greek and Roman slavery by discussing a series of specific problems: the historical origins of slavery in ancient Greece and Rome; the ideologies constructed by slaveholders to justify enslavement and control their slaves; the nature of master—slave relationships and the ways in which factors like a slave's gender and education affected the social and economic realities of these relationships; and the extent to which slaves could realistically hope for manumission. We will also devote considerable time to a basic problem of method: given that much of our evidence reflects the views of the slaveholding elite, is it possible to reconstruct the experiences of slaves themselves? All sources will be read in English translation.
Alexander the Great (Clst 226 / Hist 199)
This course examines the career of Alexander the Great, the political and social structures that characterized his world, and the historiographical traditions (ancient and modern) that shape our understanding of his life and times. We will focus primarily on two clusters of problems. First, we will examine what Alexander's career can tell us about the dynamics of empire and imperialism in the multicultural world of the late fourth century BCE. Second, we will grapple with the interpretative challenges generated by our sources, which consist largely of literary accounts produced by authors who wrote long after Alexander's own lifetime and who relied on earlier texts that no longer survive.