Classical Studies 97a: Greek Culture and Civilization Fall 2011 MWF 11.00 am: Boylston 103 Instructor: Paul J. Kosmin (
[email protected]) Office hours: Monday 12.00 to 1.00pm, Wednesday 12.00 to 1.00pm in Boylston Hall, Room 215 TFs: Andrew Johnston (
[email protected]) Rebecca Katz (
[email protected]) Office hours: TBD Course Description This course will comprehensively cover the extraordinary history of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean palace civilizations to the Roman conquest of the East Mediterranean. Students will be introduced to the major political, social, economic, and cultural transformations in ancient Greece and the east Mediterranean. In addition, the class will explore a variety of major textual sources (in translation) and archaeological evidence to investigate the ways in which historians seek to understand the surviving traces of this brilliant ancient culture. Prescribed Texts and Readings Available at the Harvard Coop, and on reserve in Smyth library: - J. Boardman, J. Griffin, and O. Murrary, Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 2002) - abbreviated as OHG - R. Morkot, The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece (London, 1997) - abbreviated as HAAG - The Landmark Herodotus , trans. Andrea Purvis (New York, 2007) - abbreviated as Hdt. NB. These may be available more cheaply for purchase online. Additional secondary readings (i.e. modern scholarship) will be available in scanned form on the course isite. They are listed below and appear in the weekly schedule as “Additional Reading [number]”. As there is no adequate source-book, selected ancient primary sources, other than Herodotus, will be available in scanned form on the course isite and in a ring-binder in the Classics Department (from which they should not be removed).