CLAS 328 A: Sex, Gender, and Representation in Greek and Roman Literature

What kinds of stories did ancient Greeks and Romans tell about human interpersonal experience?  This course will explore the worlds of myth, fiction and poetic self-representation through which Greek and Roman writers and readers push the envelope of everyday life and explore larger worlds of identity, desire and the imagination.

Presupposing no prior study of what we know as classical antiquity, the course will offer the opportunity to explore a formative period of civilization in the Mediterranean and beyond through consideration of some of its most characteristic texts and ideas, and to measure them in terms of the perspectives and expectations which we as readers bring to them from our increasingly diverse and interconnected 21^st century societies.

To be studied, via Homer, Sappho, Euripides, Plato, Ovid and others:  the affirmation and inversion in literature of culturally agreed gender roles; myths of male and female identity and self-fashioning; the marginalization and reclamation of female consciousness; and the ‘rules of engagement’ in ancient love poems and narratives of sexual encounter, in which gender, status, sexual identity and sexual preference are all bound up together ... and often problematized. 

Midterm and final tests. No term paper, but the final testing will include an extended essay question from a menu of topics assigned ahead of time. 

Note that Clas 328A and B are two enrollment categories within the same class: no difference otherwise.

The first class meeting is on Wed January 4.  Because the instructor has an out-of-town academic commitment, there will be no class meeting on Fri January 6. 

Required Reading Texts (all to be available in Univ. Bookstore)

(1) R. Fitzgerald, tr., Homer:  The Odyssey

(2) P. Turner, tr., Longus:  Daphnis and Chloe

(3) P. Bing & R. Cohen, tr., Games of Venus

(4) A.D. Melville, tr., and E.J. Kenney, intro., Ovid:  Metamorphoses