The Department of Classics encourages innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship that converges with work in a variety of fields. In keeping with the pluralistic and collaborative nature of the faculty’s research, students focusing on Classics often explore additional coursework in adjacent subject areas, including Art History, Comparative Literature, English Literature, Germanic Studies, Linguistics, Philosophy, Romance Languages and Literatures, Social Thought, and Theater and Performance Studies.
Selected Faculty
Sample Courses
CLAS 35808 - Roman Law (Clifford Ando)
The course will investigate the Roman law as a topic of historical inquiry; study its implication in political and demographic changes; raise problems of evidence and method in our examination of surviving sources of knowledge; and consider areas of legal doctrine and practice both in Rome and the communities over which Rome ruled.
CLAS 46616 - Reason and Religion (Shadi Bartsch, Robert Richards)
The quarrel between reason and faith has a long history. As religion and its place in society have evolved, so have the standing of, and philosophical justification for, non-belief on rational grounds. This course will examine the intellectual and cultural history of arguments against religion in Western thought from antiquity to the present.
CLAS 36017 - Gods and God in Imperial Asia Minor (1–300 CE) (Alain Bresson)
Roman Asia Minor in the Imperial period provides an extraordinary case of religious plurality and creativity. This class will examine the various aspects of this religious diversity as well as the social and political factors that may explain the religious equilibrium prevailing at that time in Asia Minor.
CLAS 35017 - Peripheries of the Greek World (Catherine Kearns)
Using textual and material evidence, this course will examine the concept of peripheries (and cores) and question the methodologies that historians and archaeologists use to consider the dynamic spaces around the edges of the Aegean Sea: colonial settlements, sites of pilgrimage, industrial districts, and exotic fringes, among others.
CLAS 37716 - Exemplary Leaders: Livy, Plutarch, and Machiavelli (Michele Lowrie, John McCormick)
Cicero famously called history the “schoolmistress of life.” This course explores how ancient and early modern authors—in particular, Livy, Plutarch, and Machiavelli—used the lives and actions of great individuals from the Greek and Roman past to establish models of political behavior for their own day and for posterity.
A complete listing of offerings is available at the Department’s course page.
The Classical Languages Option
The Classical Languages Option is intended for students who wish to study Classics at the graduate level but require additional strengthening of their language skills in order to meet the admissions requirements of most major PhD programs. Students interested in the Classical Languages Option must have one year of either Greek or Latin and at least two years of the other language before beginning MAPH. Students must also complete competency exams in both Latin and Greek (exam results determine placement in appropriate-level language courses during the student’s MAPH year). Students who complete the following requirements will receive a Classical Languages notation on their MAPH transcript:
- MAPH Core course
- Seven elective courses, six of which must be in Greek or Latin
- Completion of a thesis
- A passing grade on the MAPH reading exam in both Greek and Latin, taken in spring quarter
Recent Classics Thesis Projects
“Livy’s Sabine Women as an Exemplum”
Zachary Galaboff, MAPH ’10
Advisor: David Wray
“The Hammer and the Nail: Symbiosis in the Medusa-Perseus Dynamic”
Julia Shaddox, MAPH ’11
Advisor: Sarah Nooter
“The Shrine that Burns with Eternal Flame: Semele as Mother and Cult Hero in Euripides' Bacchae”
Teresa Rostkowski, MAPH ’12
Advisor: Christopher A. Faraone
“Stoic Philosophy and the Politics of the Liberal Self”
Elizabeth Foster, MAPH ’16
Advisor: Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer